What do you get if you take a self-possessed singer/songwriter immersed in physics and let him write impassioned guitar rock? "Electricity", a song about "that desire you get sometimes to become just energy - just a pure, fast pulse of energy", according to Something For Kate frontman Paul Dempsey. "I guess the other side of it is the frustration of being a human constrained by flesh and bone."
These may be heady themes for a rock record if it wasn’t for the times we live in. Pre-millennial tension understandably ranks up there with Y2K as a late ’90s buzzword. But while the world sets about doing its best to fulfil the populist mythology of cyber-classic Blade Runner, Something For Kate have a more idiosyncratic take on the hype. Their second album Beautiful Sharks is all about the insanity of modern living, approached from the viewpoint of the scientist.
Dempsey’s growing love of heavy science has left him in a position where he looks at the everyday and sees quantum physics at work. Whether writing surrounded by ’70s futurist architecture on the band’s working/rehearsing holiday in Toronto, or sitting in a Dublin bar sloshed on his first trip to his parents’ home town of old, Dempsey can’t help but see a bigger picture.
"It’s definitely a big part of the record", says Dempsey. "We didn’t sit down and decide to write a theme album about that balance, but it’s just lyrically the way that we’re feeling. The reading matter is more real factual, textual, evidential science. But that translates into everyday life for me. I guess the reason these lyrics came out the way they did is because when you’re reading a lot of stuff about quantum physics and the behaviour of particles it does effect the way you see the world. You see something strange happen walking down the street, it changes the way you think about it."
Only Dempsey could really relate these songs to anything quantifiable. There’s a sense of release behind them which recalls the band’s first reviews, which were all about the impressive passion behind Dempsey’s imposingly gaunt countenance.
Something For Kate’s debut album was an arty rock epic, full of wilfully constructed time changes and inventive guitar work. But there were sufficient hooks beneath the complexities to chime with the Australian pub going public, so the band was kept busy promoting successful Triple J singles "Captain (Million Miles an Hour)" and "Working Against Me" for most of 1998.
Unfortunately the workload caused severe writer’s block, the band unable to find inspiration in the day to day touring life or downtime in Melbourne. "It felt really weird to have not written a song or a sentence for six months", Dempsey recalls. "I felt paralysed, because to be creative is a large part of who you are as a person."
The solution came in the form of escapist trips away, funded by money saved from all the touring. While bassist Stephanie Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman bonded over shopping in LA, Dempsey decided to experience his heritage by visiting his extended family in Ireland. "My parents and all my siblings were born there", he says, "I had to get back there and see what it was all about."
The fuss was mostly about Guinness, which Dempsey attests is far better in Ireland than the exports we get in Australia. Dempsey became so engrossed in the pint-at-10am lifestyle of Ireland that by the time he met his bandmates to write in Toronto, he was in the mood to drink rather than deal with the surroundings.
But in a dodgy downtown rehearsal studio, writing began in earnest, as Dempsey found the inspiration he’d lacked through new experiences. Rumours that the band were working on an album diametrically opposed to the full on emo-rock of Elsewhere in 8 Minutes were unfounded.
"I don’t think there’s ever been a conscious decision to get some samplers and get some beats going", says Ashworth. "There wasn’t any conscious attempt to acknowledge current trends."
The result is an album which sounds like SFK, but has many of its hard edges removed. The songs aren’t flat out any more, Hyndman opting for something closer to a brushes feel on six songs, with occasional loops and keyboards used. But the concessions to trip hop are limited to the bass and drum sounds being messed with and forced to the front. SFK don’t want to go trip hop, French disco, or lo-fi tech under any circumstances.
"It’s like a fashion industry, it’s so fickle," says Ashworth of the temptation to chase and ape musical trends in the name of staying on a contemporary ‘edge.’ "I find it really disappointing when bands do that. It’s kind of like selling your soul for the moment. I prefer people who have stuck to their instincts and always do what they’re doing against prevailing trends - people like Neil Young."
Simon Wooldridge