Paul Dempsey Reflects On Something For Kate’s Forward-Thinking Debut

After 20 years on the scene, Something For Kate are about to reissue their catalogue in conjunction with a national anniversary tour. In the first of a six-part series, we ask Paul Dempsey to reflect on their debut, Elsewhere For Eight Minutes:

We were 19, 20, and we were just running on this manic energy, it's the only way I can describe it, and we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know anything. We were still learning about recording studios and how it all worked. I honestly, without word of a lie, didn't even know how to turn on a valve amplifier at that point. I had only ever used shit equipment.

We still couldn't believe that we'd even gotten a record deal and put out a couple of EPs and people were interested in what we were doing. We thought it was all probably going to end, we thought that it would probably be the only album we'd get to make before the label came to their senses and dropped us. We thought that whatever wave we were riding would inevitably crash, but we were just having a ball and enjoying every second of it while we could.

We didn't want to record the album in Australia. We picked New Zealand because it was near enough but it wasn't Australia. We didn't want to be anywhere where the friends could drop in or where anyone from the label could drop in. We just tried to make it impossible for anyone to contact us while we were making it. So we ended up in New Zealand.

Before going to New Zealand, Julian [Carroll, bassist] had informed Clint [Hyndman, drummer] and I that he was leaving the band. He couldn't keep up the touring; he just wasn't enjoying it. His partner wasn't in a good place, and the more he was away, it was just putting a lot of strain on parts of his life. They were all perfectly understandable reasons. We were all sad about it because we were all really good friends and we were having so much fun together and we didn't want him to go. I don't know if he really wanted to go but he made a responsible decision. So it was just as friends we were like, 'Do you want to come to New Zealand and just make the record? And it'll sort of be like a bit of closure that we've made a full-length album together and we'll get another bass player.' I think he was really happy that we wanted to do that and we had a great time.

"We thought that whatever wave we were riding would inevitably crash."

We all just played our instruments like it was the last time we were ever going to make an album. We basically set up and played in the studio the same way we did on stage. Clint smashed his drums as hard as he does on stage and I screamed and bashed my guitar and it was the only thing we knew how to do. We didn't know about any of the subtleties of the studio environment. I think the record still sounds that way. It sounds so raw and live and just like three guys bashing the shit out of everything. We were having fun and we knew Julian was leaving obviously, but it was a celebratory atmosphere. We were all at peace with his decision and we were just trying to enjoy ourselves one last time.

We finished recording in New Zealand and then we all came back to Australia and Julian moved to the country. A couple months later Clint and I went to New York to mix the album with Brian and it was weird. Just Clint and I in New York without a bass player. We were finishing our first album and we didn't know what was going to happen when we got home or who was going to be our bass player and how we were going to go on tour.

A lot of the press releases leading up to the release all said The Problem Of Time Travel. The first single Captain may have been released when the album was still called The Problem Of Time Travel. I guess I knew that I wanted it to have a title along those lines. I wanted the title to reference a lot of things that I was thinking about at the time and reading about at the time, just stuff that was interesting to me at the time and still is. I knew that I wanted it to have a title like that.

A lot of music, I daresay most music, is about the past. Most writers, most music is written from a reflective standpoint where its all 'I did this,' 'I did that', 'I can't change this', 'I can't change that', 'This happened', 'Baby come back', etc, etc. I don't know, I was thinking about that as well as reading a lot of science-y stuff, so that felt like a suitable thing for the title. I was trying to write things that were looking forward in time.

"I'm proud of that but I wouldn't write that album today."

All these kind of various notions to do with physics and science stuff were kind of swimming around my head, so The Problem Of Time Travel was a working title but I guess I was never completely sold on it. So Elsewhere For Eight Minutes sort of came to me, I think I was reading A Brief History Of Time [Stephen Hawking] and Elsewhere For Eight Minutes sort of came to me out of that, it's sort of most directly referenced in that book, and I just thought it had more of an unusual sound to it. As was my teenage temperament at the time I made everyone change everything at the last minute.

Everybody is critical and looks back at their younger self with a mixture of embarrassment and maybe a couple weird little glimpses of pride. I'm obviously a different person now and a different musician and a different singer and a different lyricist. Clint's a different drummer. We have a different bass player [Stephanie Ashworth]. I think now that it's a document of three 19-year-olds at the end of something but also at the beginning of something. We were just doing the only thing we knew how to do.

I'm proud of the fact that we did it. I'm proud of the fact that I got to go overseas and make an album for a major label when I was a teenager. I'm proud of that but I wouldn't write that album today.

Interview by Mark Neilsen and Hannah Story.