Something About Stephanie
by Chad Watson
Newcastle Herald, July 10 2003

SOMETHING For Kate member Stephanie Ashworth is not comfortable speaking about herself or her band. The 28-year-old would much rather let her music, her photography and her frontman Paul Dempsey do all the talking.

"I'm no good at doing interviews," she says. "Just thinking about them makes me want to have a cigarette. 

"That's why me and our drummer Clint (Hyndman) usually try to pass off the interview requests to Paul. 

"But, I suppose, at the end of the day it's good to have some contact outside the band because you can became quite insular. It's nice to talk to other people about what you do so as to get some sort of other perspective."

Ashworth's prolific love affair with the camera puts another perspective on the multi-layered moody pop of Something For Kate. Look at any SFK record cover or poster issued through Sony affiliate Murmur and you'll see an example of her handiwork with the lens.

"The way that my brain is wired, I tend to see things as images contained within themselves," says Ashworth, who has fine art degrees from three universities. "I often see the photographs in my mind before I take them (two examples of her work are seen on this page). Photography is a creative outlet for me and I'm firmly of the opinion that there's no-one better to provide the visual accompaniment to a record than the people playing on that record."

The Melbourne band, having just returned from a European sojourn with Silverchair, is touring nationally in support of new single Deja Vu, playing tonight with Death Cab For Cutie (US) and Starboard (Sydney) at Panthers ClubNova Newcastle. Ashworth explains that her shots, not unlike the title of their string-enhanced new song, allow her to revisit artistic themes.

"I took a new camera on the overseas tour we just went on and I took something like 2000 photos, which is quite ridiculous," she laughs.

"Sony gave me one of their mega digital cameras so I can do really high-resolution shots for album covers, posters and stuff.

"That way, they can blow them up to a decent size without pixilating."

Deja Vu is the lead single from the group's fourth album, The Official Fiction, which follows the success of their sweeping sonic epoch Echolalia. Ashworth was finishing off the artwork for The Official Fiction, due for release on August 18, when TE Herald zoomed into her comfort zone.

"I take all the photographs then I go and sit with the people in the art department at Sony," she explains.

"We put them up on a screen and we mess around with what I want to do with them. They put it together and send it back to me for approval.

"We're control freaks with every aspect of the band. But I think we have to be because it's our thing.

"I would feel uncomfortable handing over our artwork to other people.

"I'm going to use images on this new album that could be interpreted fairly politically but I don't really want to say too much."

That's because it's Something For Kate policy to let others make up their own minds about their work.

"With a song like Deja Vu, the listener will probably pick up something new on every listen," she says.

"The lyrics and music can be interpreted in so many ways. There's no right or wrong, and we don't try to enforce one meaning on people.

"That's not what we're here for.

"We're here to challenge people.

"We want them to think for themselves, rather than hand them the meaning on a platter."

The danger with that policy is Something For Kate leave themselves open to misinterpretation. Take the group's relationship with American engineer-producer Trina Shoemaker, for instance. Some critics, while applauding the sonic depth and breadth of Echolalia, heaped more praise on Shoemaker than Something For Kate. The observation was repeated enough to rub the band members the wrong way, with Dempsey telling this reporter at the time that many music journalists had a "bad attitude".

"It's the Australian way to say that it must have been the producer when a band does something unusual or something well," Ashworth says. "We initially got Trina for her engineering skills rather than her production work ... we pick people on the sound they pull for other artists."

Shoemaker, a former protege of studio legend Daniel Lanois (Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, U2), boasts a stellar list of credits, including REM, Pearl Jam, Iggy Pop, Queens of the Stone Age and Sheryl Crow.

"We were impressed by the clarity of recordings Trina did for Sheryl Crow, who, of course, is very different to us," Ashworth reveals.

"The other thing about her is she's willing to try anything in the studio.

"She's not one of these remote sort of people who does everything by the book. She's happy to do bizarre things to get sounds."

Keen to set the record straight, Ashworth points out all the songs on Echolalia were "finished" before Shoemaker arrived.

"We got Trina in to record them," she says. "We don't need anybody to arrange them God forbid if they tried. Trina knows that, and we wouldn't work with someone who messed with our arrangements."

Something For Kate was obviously happy with Shoemaker, who Ashworth describes as a "brilliant engineer", and the environment in which they worked together. In compiling The Official Fiction they started at Mangrove Studios on the Central Coast, the idyllic setting for Echolalia, then finished the album in Los Angeles.

"When you get inside most studio control rooms you could be anywhere Melbourne or Moscow," Ashworth says. "Mangrove is different because you can actually see natural light from inside the studio.

"I mean Paul put the vocals down while looking out over a national park. There's not many places in the world that you can do that.

"But the natural light was just one of the attractions. It's such a beautiful place but it also allowed us to get away from everything and everyone.

"It's good to get some distance from friends, family and record company.

"We love them but we don't want them there in the studio with us."

Ashworth creates music and photography the old-fashioned way. While grateful for the new digital camera from Sony, she prefers the single-lens reflex (SLR) models.

"I use both formats but I'm still coming to grips with digital," she says. "You could say I'm an analog girl in the studio and out.

"I like digital because if you're impatient, you can immediately look at your work after taking it."

In much the same way, Something For Kate opts for the traditional studio approach of recording on tape rather computer hard-drive.

"There's a quality to film on an SLR camera that you can't get on digital," Ashworth notes.

"It's the same reason why we always record to two-inch tape rather than relying on computer programs such as ProTools.

"Two-inch tape is much more cumbersome, more expensive and really impractical in some ways but there's nothing like it in terms of sound."

Something For Kate, particularly Dempsey, is often portrayed as overly serious artists lacking a light side. But new single Deja Vu, with its "baby" and "fate or free will" references, gives a glimpse of the band's philosophical sense of humour.

"I think it's quite funny 'baby' is having an existential dilemma," Dempsey says of the song.

Ashworth understands why her singing guitarist is misunderstood.

"He's very serious about what he does but he's also one of the funniest blokes you'll ever meet," she says.

"I think people see Paul's emotional intensity in our shows and lyrics then they assume he's the Darth Vader of Australian music.

"But he's not ... he's actually very funny. I think it's just convenient for the media to put him in that tall, dark and brooding box."

What about Ashworth? Does she display the same level of all-for-the band intensity on and off stage?

"I actually feel guilty because you have got me talking too much about myself rather than talking about the new single," she offers.

Hmmm.

"This is a photo I took in a very jetlagged state whilst driving through Germany en route to Berlin where we were joining Silverchair for the first of the European shows with them."

Stephanie Ashworth

"This is the tranquil surrounds of Mangrove Studios Paul gets to appreciate this vista as he puts his vocal tracks down."