Beat Magazine 30/5/01 Feature Story

SOMETHING FOR KATE

Paul Dempsey slumps back in his chair, exhaling to the point where his six foot four frame seems to shrink, before quickly inhaling the palpable sense of relief. The interview, you see, is over.

Paul Dempsey - not unusually - doesn't really enjoy interviews. Not because he's above them, maybe because he's tired of reinterating that he is not angsty or humourless, but mostly because he feels they demand a person to be egotistical. The situation is created expressly to allow someone to talk about themselves continously, and that's not really a place Paul Dempsey wants to be. But he'll do it all in good grace because he's terribly happy with the place his band, Something for Kate, are in now. For example "we're happy with it and that's what matters the most"
"i'm happy about it"
"We all end up being really happy with what comes out."
"Mostly I'm just really happy that they're there."
If initial impressions carry any weight, Dempsey is a man with much to be happy about. Something for Kate - Dempsey, drummer Clint Hyndman and bassist Stephanie Ashworth - are more stable than ever. This stability has finally allowed the band the time and room they have needed to grow, and thus all manner of anticipation is building around the June 25 release of Something For Kate's new album Echolalia. The album is the follow up to 1999's Beautiful Sharks, which sold in gold quantities, solidified the band's reputation for quality rock, and swelled the ranks of their intensely dedicated fanbase.
Now Dempsey also finds himself with the weird ability to strike fear into his fans' hearts. All it takes is the release of a new single - in this case monsters - then to watch as the fans react to something new, different, and therefore, frightening.
"You put out a new single," he says, "and all these people who might ahve been attached to Beautiful Sharks are hearing this new song, and they're almost slightly scared and a little bit panicked that it's gonna be different," his voice rises in a mock fan-fare "and what does that mean and have we gone somewhere they didn't want us to go, and, oh my god, what if that happened?"
"i should just say it right now - it (Echolalia) is different, it's really different. But Beautiful Sharks was really different to the first album, and it's always gonna be really different." Third albums, so they say, are supposed to be the ones where everything comes together, where all the little inklings of what was sgood about a band over their first couple of albums suddenly just click. Ask Dempsey if this happened on Echolalia, and he handballs it straight to those trembling fans.
"well, we'll see won't we? The three of us think it's the best album we've made thus far, but that's just the three of us, and we would say that."
"so I'm just gonna leave it until people hear it and they'll decide for themselves. We feel that we've honed our abilities to express the things that we've wanted to express, where maybe in the past we've detoured at the wrong spots. But I dunno, maybe people liked the detours."
"Lyrically," Dempsey continues. "I feel like i've nailed some things that i really wanted to somehow express. Some of the things I've actually been thinking about or feeling that i wanted to capture, I feel like I've done a better job of capturing it, and that I haven't fooled myself or deluded myself. I've been able to write a few lines that i've been really happy with afterwards and gone 'wow, that's nailed exactly what i was feeling.' I'm sure that no one else will understand it, but it's what i needed to do for myself."
If dempsey has become more accomplished at capturing his feelings in words, it's because he's had to.
"Originally, when we started, I was just writing words coz no one else would, and i was singing coz no one else would, but over time it's kind of become my thing. I've become hooked on it to the point where i actually really depend now on writing words that are gonna help me get to somewhere. The words have become my really important vehicle to get stuff out."
And, as he becomes a more dedicated lyricalist/vocalist, he becomes less and less of a guitarist.
"I don't feel like i've gotten any better on my guitar for ten years. i started playing guitar when i was 9 years old, and all through my teenage years i was listening to all different kinds of music and getting really excited about being able to play guitar and trying to be the best guitarist and all that stuff. But then i kind of plateued. I stopped thinking about being a great guitar player and started thinking about being creative instead; it was no long about how fast can you play, how many Metallica guitar solos can you play, it was more like, how creative can you be. what can you invent? So Now I see the guitar as just being a plank of wood that i use to help me get a song out."
"The guitar doesn't really provide me with ideas. That's the safest thing to say. The guitar feels like a very restrictive thing to me."
Dempsey says that he has learnt to enjoy strumming, and that this has helped bring a new feel to Echolalia, it was no doubt a pastime encourage by the highly successful string of solo acoustic shows Dempsey performed around the nation before recording the new album.
The experience, he says, was a testing and educational one.
"It's definitely more intense being up there all by yourself, and not being able to hide behind the sheer volume, coz you're just there with your acoustic guitar, and if the crowd's not listening you reall know it, because you can hear them talking. At solo shows you're really at the mercy of the crowd coz they could totally shut you out if they wanted to. So it is much more intense and it makes it doubly as intense when they do listen, when you can hear a pin drop. Then you go, fuck, i almost with they'd start talking or something. But it's a really great thing that they do listen and it just makes you feel like there's someone listening. It's a nice feeling, everyone likes be listened to."
Echolali's impending release means that, once again, a lot of people will be listening to what Something For Kate have to say. And ultimately, that will make Dempsey and his bandmates very happy indeed.
"All i can do really is just for the three of us to be happy. Obviously it matters to us and it factors in that other people like it as well, obviously we want that, but if we set about catering for that, we'd be kidding ourselves, we'd be kiddin everyone else. SO we've just worked really hard to record what we wanted to record, and to document where we're at right now."
"We're happy with it, so we hope everyone else is too."

By Neala Johnson