“Thanks for coming down, welcome to the rehearsal.”
So declares Paul Dempsey by way of introduction to the expectant Prince Bandroom audience, swiftly dropping the charade that tonight is the debut of Max Planck & The Survival Experts – the latest thinly-veiled alias Something For Kate have adopted in their history of secret gigs at the St. Kilda venue.
The ‘rehearsal’ element of this particular ‘surprise’ show is for an especially significant occasion: a warm-up gig for the Melbourne trio’s national tour to commemorate their 20th Anniversary as a band. “Tonight is about overcoming the nervousness of your 20th birthday … or something,” remarks Dempsey.
As such the mid-week crowd is stacked with the most devoted of SFK fans; those who have dutifully lined up around the block in the cold to grab the (door sales only) tickets to see ‘Max Planck & Co.’ – the first lucky 200 gleefully accepting their rare 4-track samplers – and patiently waiting an hour-and-a-half for the band to grace the stage.
They’re expecting to hear just how the band – Dempsey, drummer Clint Hyndman, and bassist Steph Ashworth – plan to cherry pick from their six-album strong discography for the touted ‘career-spanning setlists’. Plus, what the faithful are most looking forward to (yours truly among them) is a chance to hear the band shake the dust off material closer to the earlier end of their 20 year career.
Something For Kate know this full well, and it quickly becomes clear that they don’t make any plans to disappoint the faithful awaiting them to pluck from the rarer and lesser-heard corners of their catalogue.
In short, by tonight’s indication, you can expect the Something For Kate 20th Anniversary Tour to contain A-grade fan service, and plenty of it.
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After rattling through the one-two opening of 11-year-old faves ‘Jerry, Stand Up’ and ‘Say Something’ with rigour, Dempsey punctuates (and again re-iterates by the closing of their 100-min-ish performance) that they’ll be showcasing “only half of what we’ll be playing on the proper tour.”
Namely “plenty of bits and pieces; shit we haven’t played in ages … like this,” he states before charging into ‘Picard’s Lament’, all the way back from the band’s pre-Ashworth debut EP from 1996.
While the latest album, 2012’s Leave Your Soul To Science, remains a potent illustration of the trio’s abilities (“SFK v2.0″ as Dempsey called it), hearing them return to the noisy, slightly anarchic alt-rock of their 18-year-old selves in the live setting – with the benefit of experience – blesses the older material with renewed energy.
It’s fascinating too that the spiky, guitar rock of their 90s era has since come back around into vogue, further pitching Something For Kate as influential mastheads that were distinguished then – as now – by Dempsey’s unique sense of songcraft.
The muscular rendition of their unlikely hit (the first of many) ‘Captain (Million Miles An Hour)’, demonstrates Dempsey’s idiosyncratic blueprint in its simplest configuration. A basic lyrical metaphor about escapism that, when welded to an off-kilter power chord pattern, proves to still be transcendent even after all these years. By tonight’s indication, you can expect the Something For Kate 20th Anniversary Tour to contain A-grade fan service, and plenty of it.
Later in the set, presenting vintage B-side ‘You Can’t Please Everybody, Rockwell’, Dempsey says “this is a weird song” and with Hyndman’s hissing hi-hat steering the wiry shifts and stop-start blasts of guitar, it most certainly is. But it’s also historic; “the first song we ever wrote together – I think,” the towering frontman turning to his bandmates for confirmation as the crowd emits a roar of approval.
The bellowing from fans is a regular occurrence throughout… when their gaze isn’t locked towards the stage or their mouths wording each impassioned lyric. Consistently loud applause follows both familiar favourites, like Déjà vu and an encore closing ‘Electricity’, while the newer material is greeted with equal adulation; such as the ferociously insistent yet uplifting ‘Star Crossed Citizens’, and a slower, lumbering tempo to the brooding ‘The Kids Will Get The Money’ that enhances its latent menace.
The leapfrog between different eras also shows how cohesively it all sits together as a collective body of work.
Another highlight is ‘Hawaiian Robots’, which speaks to the strength of the band’s songbook; a quintessential mid-career B-side that was criminally left of any of SFK’s main albums – though it would have fit beautifully on Desert Lights. It’s a masterstroke then, that they then segue directly into that record’s ‘Down The Garden Path’ – equally informed by prog-lite shifts, especially in its breakdown.
For all the prepared specialties of the setlist – from a rousing cover of R.E.M. (a band favourite), to Dempsey’s solo take on ‘Sleep Is Worth The Wait’, and a divine performance of the evening’s quasi-title track ‘Max Planck’ – the real joy is in spying the unscripted moments of humanity.
Hyndman’s malicious grin towards touring member Anthony Milne as he readies to hammer the hell out of his kit for a forthcoming fill; Paul playfully tapping his bassist wife’s head in the opening of ‘Captain’; the self-deprecating jibes at their band name; Dempsey crying “oh shit, I start this one” when forgetting to open ‘Statues’.
It’s these moments of ‘Something For Kate: the people’, as much as it is ‘Something For Kate: the songs’, that prove why they’ve persevered the fickle trends of the music world for 20 productive years and won a small army of fearlessly loyal followers in the process.
The same satisfied community that is ushered out into the St Kilda night air with grins on their faces, knowing that though they’ve only experienced “half of the proper tour” they’ll soon join Something For Kate for the other half of their 20th birthday celebration.
Setlist:
Jerry, Stand Up
Say Something
Picard’s Lament
Roll Credit
The Kids Will Get The Money
Survival Expert
Max Planck
Hawaiian Robots
Down The Garden Path
You Can’t Please Everybody, Rockwell
Déjà vu
Star Crossed Citizens
Statues
Captain (Million Miles An Hour)
Beautiful Sharks
The One I Love (R.E.M. Cover)
Twenty Years
Encore:
Sleep Is Worth The Wait (solo acoustic)
Like Bankrobbers
Electricity
Something For Kate 20th Anniversary Tour 2014 Dates
Friday 4th July – The Astor, Perth WA – SOLD OUT
Friday 11th July – The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD – SOLD OUT
Saturday 12th July – Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW
Friday 18th July – The Forum Theatre, Melbourne VIC – SOLD OUT
Saturday 19th July – The Forum Theatre, Melbourne VIC – SOLD OUT
Sunday 20th July – The Forum Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Friday 15th August – HQ, Adelaide SA
Tickets for all shows on sale at www.somethingforkate.com
