Monster Management, Village Sounds & Remote Control Records
Methyl Ethel (Solo)
It's apparent that it is not possible to tour in October, due to the ongoing presence of COVID-19. Rather than reschedule again, the tour has been cancelled. Methyl Ethel looks forward to touring again as soon as it's safe to do so - but we don't feel comfortable holding onto fans' money with so much uncertainty around future dates. Hope to see you soon.
Here’s a read on Hurts To Laugh. It’s an EP by Western Australia’s Methyl Ethel,
recorded within the same sessions as 2019’s Triage. It marks the ongoing output of producer and
multi-instrumentalist Jake Webb’s restless mind. Time and again he’s proven that while there’s
no distinction between music and art, psychologically speaking there is a difference between
feeling and emotion. One is a conscious response to a set of circumstances, the other is the
unconscious conditions of our very being that only occasionally surfaces through feelings. Hurts
To Laugh excavates this ambiguous site, implied by its very title. You can laugh so hard it hurts—
pure joy. Or laugh despite the pain—despair. These paradoxes run throughout the EP, as well as
everything that came before.
There’s the muted, knocking tom of “Charm Offensive” on this sixth Methyl Ethel release since
2013. Its 25-second false start of only a vocal and rhythm section opens in a distressed hiccough.
The lyrics are repeated but indecipherable. A sentence starts but doesn’t end before a melodic
organ carries the music into a dream pop ebb. The title is equally as inviting as it is antagonistic.
An oxymoron. An alluring assault.
Lead single “Majestic AF” stumbles into its bubbling oscillator and analogue polyrhythms, while a
kick-free drum beat marches right into an atonal synth melody supporting Webb’s equally
idiosyncratic falsetto. Visual artist Loribelle Spirovski’s impasto paint strokes on the gestural side
profile of a head on the EP cover resounds throughout the music it holds. The figure’s one detailed
eye looks out from a flurry of vivid colour. He returns his gaze to his audience and dares them to
guess what he’s thinking.
Sydney-based artist Spirovski is the same person whose work features on last year’s Triage—
Webb’s third and last album in a trilogy of obliquely expressed relationship drama, starting with
2015’s Oh Inhuman Spectacle. That was a full-length debut with the eerie art rock aesthetic of
Connan Mockasin, by a band with a similarly silly name. The jangly echoes of tracks like
“Shadowboxing” and gold certified “Twilight Driving” resonated with the blown-out vibe of sunsoaked
film photography, recorded across the bedrooms of Perth and produced by Webb himself.
This muddled metaphor of sound and image is a deliberate one, because for Methyl Ethel, the
two come hand-in-hand.
The artwork for 2015’s Oh Inhuman Spectacle; a found image titled ‘carnations in the modern
manner.’ An almost abstract still life sculpture represented in flattened space. 2017’s Everything
is Forgotten followed with artist Holly Fewson's female figure looking into a mirror with no
reflection. That album, with its platinum-selling single ‘Ubu’—oddly reminiscent of a kind of rockbased
Hot Chip-era synth pop—represented a cleaner, clearer sound worked on with Arctic
Monkeys and Foals producer James Ford.
Methyl Ethel is a project that’s the brainchild of a single mind—writer, performer and producer
Webb—while also being a live band of five members. It makes music that draws from myriad
influences and a history of new wave and indie rock, while sounding like its own thing entirely.
Both familiar and alien, intimate and aloof, you never quite know what you’re in for, but the trip is
bound to be enchanting.
Ricky Montgomery - The Rick Tour: Around the World and Rick Again
Sat 1 Jun 2024, 7.30pm | THE TRIFFID, BRISBANE, QLD
Get TicketsTwo Another
Thu 6 Jun 2024, 7.00pm | What's Golden at the Tivoli, QLD
A kaleidoscopic mix of electronic, alternate RnB, and soul. more »
Get Tickets