Giving fans Facts on Fiction
Weekly Times, July 16 2003

SOMETHING for Kate members have spent a year gently crafting the follow-up to their critically acclaimed platinum selling album of 2001, Echolalia. After sweating for their art, singer Paul Dempsey, bass guitarist Stephanie Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman are taking it on the road and giving fans their first listen to the new songs on their fourth album, The Official Fiction. Fans have already embraced the latest single, Deja Vu, a little rock gem with a swelling string arrangement by Dempsey. He says it is an uplifting song, celebrating the fact that "some questions just do not want to be answered".

The lush, melodic track features the highly acclaimed Los Angeles string quartet, The Section. The single comes with two new tracks, Losing My Mind, and Blueprint Architecture, and a live acoustic version of You Only Hide, recorded at a secret Melbourne gig. Deja Vu also offers a great example of Dempsey's often overlooked sense of humour. It is probably the first time anyone has heard the word "baby" in a Something for Kate song.

"I think it is quite funny baby is having an existential dilemma," the front man says.

"Deja Vu is a song about how you choose to adjust yourself to your surroundings, or whether you choose to adjust yourself to something that you perceive to be maladjusted.

"Sometimes the conventions and expectations of the world that we're surrounded by don't sit well with me at all.

"I'm inclined to think the world today is a very strange place." The trio recorded much of The Official Fiction at Mangrove Studios in New South Wales and then spent an added 10 days recording at two studios in Los Angeles. Trina Shoemaker took up the role of producer again and the band brought in a few guest vocalists including Grant Lee Phillips, Lisa Germano and Caitlin Cary.

MELISSA PHILLIPS

Something for Kate (supported by Death Cab for Cutie) Heaven II on Sunday, July 20. Bookings: VenueTix and CIB.