Which is not to say the band’s sixth studio album, last year’s Leave Your Soul To Science, wasn’t a welcome addition to the band’s catalogue. Produced in Dallas by Albini protégé John Congleton, the record showcases a wider, more ornate vocal range on Dempsey’s part, and according to Ashworth, owes a great deal to their time in the States.
“Living over there, definitely,” she says. “Particularly lyrically, I feel a lot of the imagery and the characters that are in the songs are from over there, the people from our neighbourhood, could have formed the backdrop for our album.
“On This Economy, for example, Paul was thinking about the whole global financial crisis from the perspective of a hedge fund manager, this character he sort of dreamed up, his life and his shtick with the ladies as a high-flying hedge fund kid – and when the economy’s failing dismally, and you’re not popular anymore, how does that person function? What’s their modus operandi then? It’s a funny scenario to assess. In the time that we were there, Wall Street was treated like a poisonous district of New York, you didn’t mention you were in any way associated with it.”
Like a lot of the band’s older work, Leave Your Soul To Science showcases an almost anthropological approach to its subject matter. As in other places, Dempsey’s lyrics here seem grim and impenetrable on first listen, before revealing themselves as a foil for someone constantly inquisitive about his surroundings, occasionally perplexed about the customs and the habits of the people around him as if he were a man who suddenly woke up to find himself on a different planet.
“I think it’s definitely a recurring theme in our band,” says Ashworth. “I think he’s been questioning things since he first started writing songs. I think he can’t help it, he’s fascinated, he’s desperate to, I guess, sort of peel off the bullshit. At the same time he’s fascinated by what people get distracted by in their daily lives so they don’t have to discuss or think about the realities.
“It’s so much his take on reality, every minute of the day he’s questioning everything and he can’t understand how other people aren’t questioning, and he’s always been kind of amused by it.”
Perhaps it’s a function of their long personal relationship – Dempsey and Ashworth married in Vegas back in 2006 – but Ashworth paints a very different picture of her bandmate than the image that prevails outside of their fan base. Something For Kate have always seemed like a maudlin band to the casual listener, and Dempsey has by extension always seemed like a particularly morose frontman – a perception at odds with anyone who’s seen Dempsey onstage in an intimate setting or delved into the more sardonic side of his lyrics.
“I think the thing about Something For Kate that people have never got is that there’s a lot of humour in these songs,” Ashworth says. “Paul is actually a very funny guy, he’s a very silly Irishman. People always think he’s miserable but he’s very funny, ferociously intelligent…
“I think that our fan base have realised that, people who listen to the records repeatedly have picked up on that. I think a lot of the time, people who aren’t fans or media just go, ‘oh too hard, miserable, dark bastard, whatever.’ It’s a pity because there is a lot of humour there, which people who have been listening to us for a long time do recognise.”
There’s always been an almost conspiratorial sense that something intimate and elusive is shared between Something For Kate and their audience, whether it’s Dempsey’s textured approach to his subject matter or the secret shows under false names the band has been staging since back in the days of Elsewhere For 8 Minutes. Ashworth believes it’s one of the main reasons why the band have kept it together while so many of their contemporaries have long since called it quits.
“I think it’s a number of things,” she says. “Obviously it comes down to a combination of personalities, what the relationship is like and whether it’s really sustainable. There’s that theory that three-pieces stay together longer because there’s only three of you. I think it’s also the nature of the songs, the lyrics that Paul writes. We’re not a first listen band. The people who relate to that voice, once they’re in, they’re in.
“I think Paul as a teenager was obsessed with Fugazi, Big Black, those sort of bands. And I think that sort of connection was all he ever wanted. And I feel like Paul is a spokesman in some way for things that [our fans] might be frustrated about. It’s really amazing to have that still, after five years’ break, and it’s my only thought as to why they’re still there.”
BY SEAN SANDY DEVOTIONAL
