Something For Kate record with Bernard Fanning for The Modern Medieval
The Melbourne band’s seventh album will be released on November 20 and features a guest appearance from the Powderfinger singer.
When Paul Dempsey and Bernard Fanning recorded an acoustic cover of a classic Queen song last month, it wasn’t just a case of two of the most recognisable voices in Australian rock music blending together — it was a glimpse of a collaboration to come this year when Dempsey’s band Something For Kate releases its first album in eight years.
“I love the challenge of taking a really huge, epic song — a massive arrangement — and reducing it to an acoustic guitar,” said Dempsey of a remote performance that both singers dedicated to Victorians undergoing their second statewide lockdown.
“I think that’s the ultimate test and ultimate display of a really well-written song: if you can take Under Pressure or [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born To Run, and do a pretty good translation with one acoustic instrument, then it allows all these other little elements to shine through,” he said.
Set for release on November 20, the Melbourne rock trio’s seventh album, The Modern Medieval, features Fanning as a guest vocalist on the track Inside Job. Although the album was recorded about a year ago at a studio co-owned by Fanning and producer Nick DiDia, the decision to add the Powderfinger frontman into the mix came late.
“There’s definitely two distinct identities in the song, but it didn’t occur to me until I was driving from Melbourne to Byron that it should be two different voices, and Bernard would be the perfect voice for it, because it’s right in his register,” said Dempsey.
With career album sales in excess of 750,000 copies, according to its record label EMI, Something For Kate will be releasing its first new album since 2012’s Leave Your Soul to Science.
Completed by bassist Stephanie Ashworth and drummer Clint Hyndman, the trio have remained active on the live circuit despite the break from recording, as has Dempsey as a solo performer.
“When the three of us are in the studio together, it goes back to this dynamic that’s always been there,” said Ashworth. “It doesn’t matter how many years have passed or what country we’re in, there’s this supercharged excitement.”
Dempsey and Ashworth are married with kids, and with the whole family spending a lot more time at home together this year, the frontman has finally had to come to terms with something he’d always previously avoided: singing at the top of his lungs in the music room inside their home.
“Clint and I have always thought it was really cute that Paul will never sing in front of us, even after 20 years,” said Ashworth. “So he would never have dreamt of singing at the house, but you can’t really be coy about being quarantined. Now we can hear him, and the children are mildly amused — and then they get on with what they’re doing and forget all about it.”
More Coverage
