Reviewed by KELSEY MUNRO

"I'm sorry, I know it's only rock 'n' roll," sings Paul Dempsey in Whatever You Want, having introduced it as a song about not believing everything you read.

Notwithstanding that disclaimer on this whole review, it's a perfect line to describe Something for Kate's music, which moves from heavy guitar tracks through all shades of brooding - even despondent electric and acoustic balladry. It's atmospheric with jagged edges, Dempsey's characteristic vocals even more bronchial than usual at this show, owing to a chest infection that was giving him some trouble.

For a band virtually without a marketing image, they're doing well. The next frontier for the Melbourne three-piece looks like being the United States, where groundwork has been laid by the appearance of Photograph (from last year's Beautiful Sharks album) on the Dawson's Creek soundtrack. But despite this inclusion on the musical wallpaper of an American teenage TV spunkfest, their music has been consistently non-formulaic and distinctive, with lyrics notable for their intelligence and literacy, if not for their cheerfulness. There is a discernible anti-TV thread through many songs: Big Screen Television criticises the apathy-inducing effects of the medium. Elsewhere, Dempsey expresses his discomfort with the media's monopoly on the truth. The Anchorman begins with a pointed, "It's OK it happened to someone you never met", and leaves us with the lucid and quietly cynical image, "The anchorman's voice guides me through the night".

Something for Kate's slanted take on pop owes much to Dempsey's idiosyncratic guitar playing, something which comes to the fore in the two solos, Beautiful Sharks and Last Minute. He plays guitar percussively and intuitively, his improbably long fingers slipping in crazy chords that could be of his own devising, since few people could reach them. There are, of course, obvious limitations in the format, but Dempsey's solo performance is a valuable part of the show, demonstrating the excellent bone structure of the songs with the production and the band noise stripped away.

That said, Clint Hyndman on drums and Stephanie Ashworth on bass make for a potent rhythm section, especially in Subject to Change, Working Against Me and 1997's huge single Captain (Million Miles an Hour), which remains their biggest hit (and was accordingly received at the Roundhouse).

A flourish of perfectly timed false endings at the close of the gig is about the only concession to showmanship. They're musicians, not performers. No-one seems to mind. See them before they're appropriated by the Dawson's Creek demographic.