Something For Kate

When Something For Kate recently performed a special live set for Triple J Live at the Wireless, held at the Northcote Social Club, drummer Clint Hyndman suffered the mortification of experiencing a temporary bout of memory loss whilst performing.“I forgot how to play drums!” he exclaims. “It took me about 7 minutes to work it out. I’d been playing the song every night on the tour and I just had a blank. I’ve never done that before and to do it on live radio... there’s four hundred people standing there waiting and I’m ready to walk off. That’s really embarrassing. I mean, I’m a professional musician!” In the past Something For Kate have had a tremendous amount of success. The band are recognised as one of Australia’s most unique acts, and have received 11 Aria Award nominations, won Triple J’s album of the year and been voted into the Triple J Hottest 100 numerous times.

Something for Kate have twice been awarded Album of the Year through Rolling Stone and also received the award for Best Live Band at the Live Music Awards. Now after a two year break, the band has now just released their fifth studio album, ‘Deserts Lights’, an album which Clint considers to be a reflection of the difficulties lead singer Paul Dempsey faced whilst struggling to write material for the album. “Paul’s always known for getting writers block. He’s the kind of guy that will labour over a syllable for months and months”. Clint says about fellow band member Paul Dempsey. “He won’t commit to stuff that he’s written until it’s in his mind perfect”.“We always play down the pressures of putting together a record” says Clint. “Paul had been battling depression all his life, but it was exacerbated by writing an album. He was still writing heaps of words but he thought it wasn’t good enough. He was striving for the perfect word to sum up a chorus”. “It was a really dark, dark period in the band to the point where we broke up for a couple of weeks” Clint continues. “Steph (bass player in Something For Kate) and I would just be working stuff out ourselves and it just got to the point where Paul was an absolute mess, we ended up telling him to get some help”.

Paul did exactly that. He went on anti depressants for a while, “which made it worse”. Clint adds. “After about six months we told him that he had to get off them (anti depressants). He knew that himself, so he got off them, wrote a few more songs and gradually came out of it”. Something for Kate eventually moved over to Los Angeles for four months to record ‘Desert Lights’, with US producer Brad Wood, who’s in the past produced bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, Tortoise and fellow Aussie, Ben Lee. “We’ve never used someone to just come in and produce”. Clint explains. “Paul just let go of the reins and said ‘ok come in, what do you want do?’. It was confronting. We had written all these little songs and to have someone come in and say it’s not good enough.. but that’s why you get producers- to get that different perspective”.

Clint believes that moving to Los Angeles was the best move the band had made. “Going over to LA was the break we needed. As soon as we got to LA Paul was fine, he wasn’t that down on himself”. After returning home from Los Angeles with a new record, the band embarked on a small tour around the country. Publicising ‘Desert Lights’ has definitely been a welcome home for the band- with Clint confirming that the completed tour was one of the best they have ever been on. “We’ve just had the most fun we’ve ever had on the road with the tour we just did.

We just did a small eleven show tour, which was exhilarating. It’s been almost two and a half years since we played a proper tour; I forgot what it was like to play in front of people again.”After a recent series of in store appearances for the album release throughout the country, Something For Kate have recently announced ‘The Desert Lights Tour’ which start in August and ends in October. Tickets are on sale from Thursday July 13th, and can be purchased at www.somethingforkate.com, as well as all the usual ticketing outlets.