The Brag

Something For Kate
This Is The Life For Me
By Dijana Kumurdian

Holding out for a new Something For Kate record was a bit like waiting for news about the Arrested Development movie: we know it’s coming, so just give it to us already. The Melbourne trio’s latest album Leave Your Soul To Science is their first since 2006’s Desert Lights, and comes three years after frontman Paul Dempsey’s debut solo record Everything Is True, which he’d been touring while living in the States for the better part of two years. Though writing with his long-time bandmates again came easily, Dempsey tells me that their time off definitely changed his approach. “I think playing all the solo shows changed me a lot as a musician and as a songwriter,” he says. “You have to approach things really differently when you’re on stage by yourself for an hour or two and there’s nothing else to hide behind. Especially in America, because when you’re playing shows people usually have no idea who you are, so it’s like every night is your first show. I got into the habit of drinking a bunch before I got on stage so that when I was up there playing I was also talking a lot, and just generally trying to be entertaining. By the time the three of us got together to play this record, I felt like a very different kind of musician.”

Leave Your Soul To Science certainly is different, trading in their go-to heavily tracked recordings for a simpler, roomier style, which made way for instruments seldom used by the band. “In the past there were just too many guitars. I just didn’t know when to say stop!” Dempsey admits jovially. “Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson. We were just really willing to experiment, because it’s been five years since our last record and it all feels really new. When we were writing the songs, we knew that there were things that we had done in the past that we wanted to avoid doing in the same way. We definitely tried to keep space in the songs and not layer up too many instruments. We didn’t want it to be as dense and heavy as some of our previous records; we wanted it to breathe. And we wanted to really experiment with different sounds as well. So knowing all of those things, we then chose to work with John Congleton [The Walkmen, David Byrne, Smog, Erykah Badu], because we knew that he was going to help us achieve that.”

Of course it still sounds like Something For Kate, with their unmistakeable dynamic and all of Dempsey’s signature croon and pointed, articulate lyrics. “Yeah, well, there’s no getting around my voice,” he says humbly. “I think we could make a record with no electric guitars and use only instruments from the sixteenth century, but because of my singing voice it’d still sound like Something For Kate, for better or for worse.”

When it came out, Desert Lights was a permanent fixture on my iPod – but when I admit to Dempsey that a few office mates and I dorked-out about the interview, I immediately cringe. Before I have the chance to backpedal, Dempsey laughs: “I enjoy the fact that when people admit to each other that they’re Something For Kate fans, they call themselves dorks.” Oops. But while they’re no Tame Impala, and no one would ever see them strut around like overconfident rock pigs, Something For Kate have certainly made their mark on the Australian music scene – which they’re poised to do once again when they launch the new album on Friday night. “Writing
and making this record and being back together as a band has all been fantastic, but it really comes together when we’re playing live shows,” he says.

What: Leave Your Soul To Science is out now through EMI
Where: The Metro Theatre
When: Friday October 12