Live Review: Something For Kate - Forum Theatre

Old heads share knowing nods in Forum Theatre’s queue; they’ve been rocking the sticky carpets of Melbourne for decades. And tonight they reconvene again for a very special occasion, Something For Kate’s 20th birthday.

This set is for the SFK tragics.

Rather than a support act, tonight’s show begins with a short film covering the band’s journey so far. Directed by local lad Callum Preston, it’s filled with archival footage, bootleg videos of early gigs, interviews and a shocking history of drummer Clint Hyndman’s hairstyles over the years.

As the film ends, Something For Kate take to the stage and immediately rip into Picard’s Lament, one of their earliest tracks. From there, the trio – plus an extra pair of hands provided by John Hedigan – take their audience on a trail through their back catalogue, progressing chronologically through a collection of songs not instantly recognisable to those without intimate knowledge of the band. This set is for the SFK tragics: the folks who spent long nights in the late ‘90s breathing in Paul Dempsey’s lyrics, swooning over Steph Ashworth or marvelling at the might of Hyndman’s drumming.

Traversing from Roll Credit to Survival Expert via Beautiful Sharks as well as Jerry Stand Up plus more, the band prove once again that despite the tender nature of much of their recorded music, on stage they are a very different beast. A minor slip-up during Max Planck shows they’re only human, taking Dempsey “back to 1995 playing at The Punters Club”.

After a brief intermission to let the crowd grab a drink (or find a better vantage point), and during which the band change their outfits, Dempsey returns for a keyboard version of Back To You and then performs All The Things That Aren’t Good About Scientology on solo acoustic, before the band hit top gear on Star-Crossed Citizens, Déjà Vu and a rip-snorting rendition of Electricity. Finishing off with Like Bankrobbers and Working Against Me, this second set includes a lot more of the ‘hits’ – think Monsters and Twenty Years – but their appreciative crowd thankfully refrain from ruining the moment by waving their phones in the air (too much).

As predictable as it might be, the two-song encore of Captain (Million Miles An Hour) and Pinstripe has the audience screaming along at the top of their collective lungs right until the last chord.

There were always going to be songs that didn’t get played tonight (Three Dimensions and You Only Hide for starters), but tonight’s three-hour epic show offers many reasons why Something For Kate have lasted 20 years, and why they’ve probably got a few more still to come.