WORDS: CHRISTIE ELIEZER

Something For Kate's remarkable new album Echolalia best captures the pictures in their heads, they say.

There was a point where it looked like Something For Kate were not going to make it to recording their third album. "it was a hard record to write, it almost killed us!" guitarist and singer Paul Dempsey sighs.
Coming in the wake of the critically acclaimed Beautiful Sharks which went gold, Dempsey went through a nightmare. For a whole year he had writer's block. No songs would come. The other two members of Something For Kate, bassist Stephanie Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman were supportive. But Dempsey is the sort of person who goes to sleep each night feeling happy because he's created something. It can either be a full song, or it can be just three lines. But is makes him feel good about himself and adds to his self-esteem.
Dempsey knows that a writer's block is part of the creative process, whether you're a songwriter or an author. But when nothing happened for 12 months, he sunk into a depression.
"It didn't make the lives of the others any easier," he admits. "It was not a case of having to tolerate me. But they had to go through it with me. We'd go to our rehearsal room, pick up our instruments and sometimes we'd just sit and stare at each other for a couple of hours. Nothing came. It must have been as hard for them as it was for me. We got scared. Would we ever get another idea?"
The 24-year old guitarist even thought about life beyond being a member of Something For Kate. He wondered if it was time to chase his life's dream of going to university, to do a course in the history of science or in astronomy or astrophyrics.
Playing music with Something For Kate had been such a lovely experience. now he found himself often walking out of rehearsal rooms frustrated. One particularly harrowing day, he stormed out and went home. "I was dying," he says with not a hint of melodrama.
Ashworth and Hyndman followed him home and found him crumpled in a heap on the living room floor. Ashworth summed up the situation quickly. "This is ridiculous, we're getting out of here, we're getting out of Australia."
That afternoon the three walked into a travel agency and told an agent, "We've got a gig next Friday, find us a place that is warm but not too far away so we won't be jetlagged when we return."
Next day, Something For Kate were on a plane to an island in the Gulf of Thailand. Dempsey spent a week under water scaba diving and totally unwound. One afternoon, he walked out of the sea, into his room, picked up his guitar, and "Monsters" flowed out in ten minutes.
The song's theme was obvious:
"I am the monster, it's about me, and I'm fighting a monster," Dempsey says. In the end, though, the song came to be seen more about those innocent objects and symbols which stop us from achieving something.
Writing "Monsters was a definite change. "After that, we lit up. The song was better than anything we'd writeen for Beautiful Sharks. We wrote about 25 songs. We returned home, and went into the rehearsal studios, sitting in a circle, throwing ideas. We never looked back."
"Echolalia" means "meaningless repetition of other peoples' words". It's a put down, of course, with tongue firmly in cheek. For all that, though, it is a marvellously original pop record with beautifully recorded sounds. It's got pop anthems like the opening "Stunt Show" which sounds lovable with an uplifting chorus and the line "how will you get yourself out of this one?" But on closer listen, it's not lovable at all. It's about someone who lies and deceives, and tries to reinvent himself. Their problem is... how do they remember each lie so they don't get caught out? "You've got a whole new story but you're bound to your invention like a ball and chain," it sneers.
The album is different to Beautiful Sharks yet it's got SFK's approach of working on a number of levels, the words often at odds to the mood of the music. They run a blue pencil through medium pop rockers ("Three Dimensions", "Say Something", "Monsters), jingle janglers ("Twenty Years"), rockers that juxtapose electric and acoustic passages ("Happy Endings", "Jerry Stand Up") and ethereal brooding pieces like "Old Pictures" and "You Only Hide" which feature Dempsey's chime harp and which you'll probably listen to in five years and still get something new from. Dempsey's mother and two sisters are classically trained vocalists: for the first time, he's using his voice to more effectively create an atmosphere.
"Feeding the Birds and Hoping For Something In Return" was originally called "Bad Italian Car Advertisement" and was supposed to evoke a fast car taking curves along a mountain road at high speed. It was one of the songs on the album that Dempsey previewed in his solo shows last year in Australia and Japan. But by the time it got recorded, it was a nifty pop number fuelled along by its own sway.
Then there's "White, the most haunting piece, which appropriately ends the album. Like "Photograph, the last track on the last album, "White" is essentially a Dempsey solo suite, and could well be about religion. It begins with a solo voice and guitar (a cry in the wilderness) and moves into a series of crescendos, drum and bass representing earth with organs, flutes and strings swirling from above evoking imagery of heaven.
Ask him about what it means, and Dempsey, a soft-spoken man who considers every sentence carefully, is tentative. He has his own theories about religion, about the spirits in trees, oceans and starts which have something to share, the relationship between religion and science, and the worth of some religious institutions. As it is, he is uneasy that the line "Eternity is a policy" (translation: believe in my set of principles and I'll give you eternal life") may be dissing someone else's beliefs, and that's the last thing he wants.
After all, SFK are aware that they're one of these lucky bands with a following which gives them the total freedom to follow their muse without putting too many expectations on them.
"We know how incredibly lucky we are to have the audience that we have," Dempsey agrees. "I don't know how we got there - but we're very aware of that. We can try different things and make different albums from the one before, and know it won't spin them out. They won't listen to a new record and say, 'Oh God, what have they done?' and never listen to it again. They'll persevere with it. Even at our live shows, we really feel they want to share something with us. We've never got the feeling they're half listening while they're getting drunk or thinking of something else."
A big part of the creative success of Echolalia is American co-producer and engineer Trina Shoemaker. The band loved the crisp and clear sounds she got on Sheryl Crow's The Globe Sessions. On the back of that album, Crow wrote a message to Shoemaker, which thanked her for being willing to try all and any ideas. That was just what SFK needed for their next musical journey.
"When we found out she'd also been involved with recordings by Pearl Jam, REM, Iggy Pop, Emmylou Harris and Queens Of The Stone Age, we knew we couldn't go wrong. Because she is obviously adventurous, to do so many styles, and quite obviously loved music."
The album was cut at Mangrove Studios, on the NSW Central Coast of INXS's Garry Beers. On the end of a dirt track, it looks over a forest, where lizards and snakes watch the proceedings from the safety of a gum tree. It was the solitude that allowed them to throw themselves into their work. In the past when they've recorded in their hometown of Melbourne, they had friends and families dropping around to chill, maybe get into the vibe of having a party.
"It had windows, so you could see the sun go up and down," Dempsey explains why the sessions were relaxed and productive. "You knew what time of the day it was, so you didn't compeletely lose track of your body clock so you didn't go mentally insane. Having natural daylight made such a difference to your mind, health, your focus and your concentration. You could walk out (of the studio) and be in a forest, and that helped everyone's health and concentraction."
Dempsey is 6'7" and hence has an affinity for giraffes. His flat in inner city Melbourne is filled with toy giraffes. For all the band's amiability, it likes to keep things close to it's chest. Questions about what social and political associations they belong to are politely deferred. I ask if there are any secret messages on their album covers or CD grooves. "Well, they won't be secret any more, will they?" Dempsey gently chides.
But he will open up in his deep interest in astophysical theory, which is a mix of astronomy (the study of galaxies and stars) and physics (the study of movement). He reads avidly on the subject and attends conventions.
"I'm no scientist but it's about theory, and the wonderful thing about it is that the theories can be over turned and it corrects itself. It's a great form of communication, mathematics is such a universal language."
A book he was reading about the string theory inspired one of the new songs "Three Dimensions". "Eleven dimensional strings make up all the matter in the universe. It's along similar lines to electricity, except you're constrained by time and space and mass and gravity. We are three-dimensional creatures. Mathematicians talk about seven-dimensional cubes, but it blows my mind because you can't get anywhere becasue the human mind is absolutely limited to three dimensions in its perception. Yet we know theoretically there are five, six, nine-demensional objects... I feel like I got a raw deal!" (Smiles shyly).
If the songs on the album are about change, movement and overcoming obstacles, they reflect Dempsey's approach to life. I ask what he needs to do to become a more perfect person. He stares worriedly.
"That would insinuate I'm a perfect person. It can't hurt to broaden your perspective. So when you go to different places and meet different people, you can relate to them and share experiences. The best way to learn about your self and become a better person is to read about the origin of the universe. I would recommend to everybody to find out about our solar system, how many stars there are, how they got there, what a superannuant is, and how old the earth is."

FACT FILE
* Formed in 1994, the line up included Paul Dempsey (guitar, vocals) and Clint Hyndman (drums)
* Stephanie Ashworth (bass) joined four years later.
* Debut album was titled Elsewhere For Eight Minutes
* Stephanie was asked by Courtney Love to join Hole. * SFK's last album Beautiful Sharks (1999) went gold.