It’s a weird feeling looking up interviews that were made over a decade ago. Back in 2001, Something For Kate were just ramping up their successful music career, with Beautiful Sharks already considered a huge achievement and their 2001 release Echolalia the album that confirmed them as one of our finest talents – here to stay, no less.
Being their third studio album and its way of quietly climbing up the ladders of the charts, it’s a huge giveaway sign that this record changed many people’s lives for the better. Echolalia is beautiful, dark and mysterious. The urgency of tracks linger when you first press play. With poignant lyrics whilst encompassing a dark, post-grunge atmosphere, it’s seriously one of their best records to date. I never had the privilege to appreciate this record until now.
In the early 2000s, I was still at the age where I couldn’t decide whether I wanted Cocoa Pops or Vegemite on toast for breakfast and still thought Britney Spears was Queen in the music world. It’s taken a long time for me to grow up but I’m glad it’s gotten to the stage where I’m able to discover new music and Something For Kate are still relatively new to me even though they’ve been around since 1994. I know for a fact that this album has shaped the lives of the people currently in their mid-30s and early 40s. It’s an album worth turning to if you feel like nothing’s going your way. There’s always a strange, comforting feeling when you listen to sad music when experiencing your lowest moments in life.
It was interesting that in a past interview, Paul Dempsey mentioned that this record was the type where you had to listen to it with headphones because of the mixing of the tracks, the sound engineer aimed for it to be something where you’ll feel the maximum 360 degree experience.
With Dempsey’s ghostly vocals, “Stunt Show” provides an electrifying performance. It’s an emotional starter, an epiphany waiting to happen. Listening to “Monsters” for the first time and understanding its meaning is one of the most rewarding things you can do. The simplicity and the alternative rock style is a parading enchantment, slowly closing in the reality that the only monsters that can be defeated are the monsters you choose to fight. In my opinion, its thematic concern is mental illness and how depression can make people feel like they’ve been defeated at their own game.
“Three Dimensions” encompasses the fragility of life and how sometimes we are stuck in ruts and become too comfortable to change the lifestyles we live, even though we know later on we’ll resent ourselves for not acting on the problem earlier. It’s an alternative rock number that combines the rhythm of hope. There is always going to be something exciting that will happen in life. Being an upbeat number, “Say Something” adds a sense of urgency with its fast-paced instrumentals and lyrics of desperation, providing an edge to the record, balancing it out with all the slow numbers off Echolalia.
With this emotional record, new and old fans can appreciate listening to this if the desire of nostalgia strikes upon them on an average Thursday or when you’ve just gotten through a difficult day and just want to chill out. Echolalia offers beauty, sadness, darkness and hope, making for an odd combination with nothing but good intentions.
Classic Review Score: 9.0 out of 10.
Echolalia – alongside their first two records – have been re-released in deluxe editions to celebrate the band’s 20th anniversary. It, along with the original version, is available now.
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