STACK #193 Nov 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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Our brains are often referred to as ‘supercomputers’ and they are hidden behind another barrier (our skulls) and they also contain our vulnerabilities and secrets and plans and dreams. They are also the room from where we monitor the external world and the place where the ‘self’ resides that no one else ever truly gets to know. It’s a song about loneliness and memory but also about bravado and the ‘program’ or ‘version’ of ourselves that we present to the world. So all that stuff is there if you choose to really think about it and read into it, but it’s also totally fine if you don’t! It can also be just a song. In terms of writers I particularly like, I could go on all day. Off the top of my head: David Markson, Donald Antrim, Donald Barthelme, Grace Paley, William Vollman, David Berman, Richard Brautigan, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Phillip K Dick, Usrula Le Guin, Roberto Bolaño… Our Extinguished Colleague is one of the most intricately arranged tracks on the album, with angular guitar, detailed rhythms on the ride cymbal, and dissonant

INTERVIEW

Something For Kate Worth the Wait On The Modern Medieval Something For Kate reach the zenith of their considerable talents, mixing curious poetry with layers of incandescent sound into songs that are so complete you feel you could reach out and touch their solid forms. Paul Dempsey answered our questions about

backing vocals.Was there a trick to its complexity as it came together, or did it take as long as it sounds to weave in all of its parts? That was the first song written for this album. It began with an off-kilter rhythm guitar riff which demanded an off-kilter bass line which prompted an off- kilter rolling drum beat and then we could only top it off with the most atonal grating lead break I could manage. It actually came together pretty easily because the singular aim was to just get as weird as possible whilst still maintaining the semblance of a song. The bassline changed a few times (we eventually simplified it) and then in the studio I improvised the whacko percussion stuff, which is played on a ride symbol which is sitting on top of a floor tom and I’m hitting different parts of the symbol and the drum and the sides of the drum shell. It was a lot of fun putting that song together; it was very loose and instinctive because the aim was weirdness.

this monolith of an album - the band's first in eight years. Read the full chat @ stack.com.au. Words Zoë Radas

In a similar vein to the above: Supercomputer contains the lyric, “I know you keep everything in a room behind a bookcase.” I tend to think of bookcases as a door to somewhere else, proverbially. Are there any books or writers which have an enduring influence on you and your writing? That particular line is a good example of the above. That one line contains a lot of information. In popular culture a lot of superheroes traditionally have secret laboratories behind a revolving bookcase where they hide their alter egos,

Works by some of Dempsey’s favourite writers: Thomas Pynchon ( Gravity’s Rainbow , 1973), Grace Paley ( The Collected Stories , 1994), Philip K. Dick ( A Scanner Darkly , 1977), David Markson ( Wittgenstein’s Mistress , 1988)

[Bassist] Stephanie [Ashcroft] said recently: “Paul gets to the crux of the matter in really efficient sentences.”This is true, and yet there’s so much poetry and wordplay in Something For Kate lyrics. How do you understand the way you’ve honed this skill over time? Songs are obviously a pretty condensed format for storytelling, but if you can assemble words in a certain way then it can result in several dimensions of meaning, even if it’s not literal meaning. You can convey a lot of information and feeling and emotion and visualisation in just a few words. And ramming words together in abstract ways can create new forms of meaning that wouldn’t make sense when spoken but seem to make perfect sense when sung.

their secret weapons, and often, their vulnerabilities (kryptonite, bats, etc). These hidden rooms usually have supercomputers full of secret information and secret plans from where the hero monitors the outside world, they are also the only place the ‘superhero’ can be themselves, but nobody ever gets to see them or truly know them.

The Modern Medieval

I enjoy the challenge of trying to use words in such a way that the listener feels like they’ve experienced something much more expansive and mutli-layered than a four minute song. It excites me to explore what’s possible in a four minute song.

by Something For Kate is out Nov 20 via EMI, including on JB-exclusive aqua blue vinyl.

Continue to read the full interview online at stack.com.au

84 NOVEMBER 2020

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