Triage

“Is this real life?” sings Methyl Ethel’s Jake Webb on ‘Real Tight,’ the self-proclaimed “surrealist love song” from his new album Triage. Over a propulsive rhythm and angular yet euphoric guitars, the song folds in on itself as Jake acts out the blurred edges of his dreams in vivid hues. “For as long as I’ve made music I’ve also poured myself into the songs. But in pieces, fragments. Like in dreams.” Methyl Ethel has always been an expression of the subconscious. Born in the heat of the Australian summer, the early recordings were built from the ground up in various bedrooms and friends’ studios; the same spaces Jake returned to for Triage, the third album in a triptych he started with Oh Inhuman Spectacle (2015) and continued with Everything Is Forgotten (2017), which was named Best Independent Album by AIR, the Australian Independent Record Labels Association.