Plucked From Memories

Something For Kate ended a six-year hiatus in 2012 with the Leave Your Soul To Science album putting to bed speculation that the stellar career of one of Australia's most successful independent rock bands had reached a quiet conclusion. With the third single from the album, Star-Crossed Citizens, released this week, the band have embarked on an extensive Australian tour from Cairns to Castlemaine. This tour is the band's first 'real' opportunity to showcase the album to fans around the country, something which bassist and vocalist Stephanie Ashworth is genuinely excited about. “The first tour we did last year was only quick – a couple of cities only in venues which were not especially large,” she says. “We thought that we'd wait until the album had had time for the album to be out, for people to get to know it, before we did the larger tour; give them a chance to get to know the songs. We find that people have a different relationship with the songs – there's something to be said for letting the songs sink in, I think.”

With over ten albums in the bag including B-sides and compilations (quite a feat considering the six year break), Something For Kate suffer the same dilemma as any successful, prolific band: how to choose the back catalogue for their upcoming tour. Ashworth is relishing the chance to rifle through the archives – she is happy to stare into the face of the past without fear or embarrassment. “I really enjoy the process of going through our records and deciding which songs we should play again and why,” she says. “There is usually a particular reason some songs are chosen and not others.”

Ashworth holds the seat of power over the setlist, and sometimes is open to democratic debate – sometimes otherwise. “There are times where I'm not fun and can be stubborn about my choices,” she admits. “There are so many moods and atmospheres we want to convey in one evening. We need to make sure there are enough tracks from EPs and singles, enough B-sides. The fans want to hear the obscure songs, the B-sides. Actually, for some reason there is a lot of attention paid to our B-sides – so much so that we put out a double album of them. They seem to resonate for people. For us, they are the songs which are quite often a bit interesting.”

Songwriter Paul Dempsey lets Ashworth and SFK drummer Clint Hyndman make the decisions, choosing to stay out of the Great Setlist Debate. “The setlist is something myself and our drummer preside over,” says Ashworth. “Paul is happy to be told. For him a lot of the emotional labour is in writing the songs, so when it comes to touring them he's happy to let us do the setlist and to let go a bit.”

So is prising the B-sides out of the memory bank, playing that obscure track made for some compilation years ago – the fourth track from that very first EP – all part of the, er, fun of collating the Something For Kate setlist? Certainly it must be tempting to get a sneaky autocue set up just in case there's a recall malfunction on stage? “No way! I'd get too much shit from the other band members if I ever used an autocue,” Ashworth laughs, horrified at the thought. “And Paul has an incredible memory, so it's really only me who lets the team down. I have to intensely rehearse and get my head around the final batch of 40 or 50 songs.”

So far she has been lucky but still lives in fear of that fateful moment when something crucial will escape her on stage. “It is definitely my big nightmare,” she confirms. “It happens to Paul very occasionally in his solo shows. He was telling me he did one solo show on his recent tour where one guy came all the way from Mexico and wanted to hear a particular song, so Paul knew he really had to do it. But four lines into the first verse he completely blanked. Luckily, the guy started singing the lines and so he quickly picked it up again.”

Whilst fans perusing the band's Facebook might find Dempsey's backstage 'shotgun karaoke' clips, where he plays various improv covers, the band have been mulling over one particular song – and have decided it won't make it to the tour's playlist: their recent cover of Divinyls Pleasure & Pain. “I'm a huge Divinyls fan,” Ashworth says. “We recorded Pleasure & Pain as a B-side a couple of months ago and I really enjoy Paul's interpretation of those lyrics. Then this terrible sad news of Chrissy [Amphlett]'s passing... Like most people I am still quite shocked and I don't know that playing it feels appropriate. For us it's almost too soon, too fresh. So I don't imagine we would play it live on this tour.”

Preparing for this tour comes hot on the heels – or at least so it feels to the band – of the album's recording and release. “The whole process was bizarrely quick,” Ashworth says, comparing the record time (pardon the pun) it took to create Leave Your Soul To Science to previous albums. “We had traditionally spent four months or more making records – for the record before this one we relocated to Los Angeles for four months – but for this one, we were in Texas for five weeks in total. In fact we were still mastering the album when the first single was about to go to radio! The way things are done these days is so different. We had four years off but the industry has changed so quickly. We were already in rehearsals, working out how to play the album live, getting our heads around how translate all those keyboards to the stage versions when our first single was already on radio,” she says.

The band's hiatus was long enough to seem perhaps permanent – certainly it caused ominous speculations to arise – however Ashworth pulls the dark rug from under these nasty thoughts, revealing a cause far more benign. “We finished our contract for Sony after writing five albums in a row with no break, so we thought 'hell, let's take a break!' Paul wanted to do a solo album, and we thought it would be a good time to take a break and then come back. Paul made his solo album, and then ended up touring it for about three years or something – it did better than he thought so he toured for longer. He and I ended up moving to New York for two years – but there was always a commitment to coming back and making more SFK records. We can tell people weren't expecting it, because it's being called a 'comeback album',” she laughs. “When really Clint and I were both saying to Paul 'excuse me, hello, another solo tour?' We did have to tap him on the shoulder and say 'that song you've just written, that's going to be for Something For Kate'.”