The most impressive thing about Jake Webb’s musical project, Methyl Ethel, is how consistent the quality of music is. Have you ever listened to a Methyl Ethel song you didn’t like? Think about it. Also, while you’re thinking, how ’bout the fact that no one’s ever seen Nicholas Cage and Marilyn Manson in the same room at the same time? Exactly. ‘Scream Whole’ is the first single off Methyl Ethel’s upcoming record, Triage, out Friday 15th February, 2019.
Cable Ties are frenetic lead lines tethered to a hypnotic rhythm section. They take the 3 minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point. Suddenly the garage rock gives way as primitive boogie, kraut and post-punk take things way out to the horizon. Formed in Melbourne in mid 2015, CABLE TIES – Jenny McKechnie (vocals/guitar), Nick Brown (bass), Shauna Boyle (drums) – have developed a dedicated, cult-like following with just two self-released 7″ singles in their arsenal. A testament to their scorching live show, Who The Hell says this three-piece “could confidently pick you up within the first few bars of a song and hurl you across the room,” with Raven Sings the Blues noting that they’re “tearing into an X-Ray Spex brand of post-punk that’s packed with gnashed teeth and crushed gravel.
Mid 2016 Cable Ties stepped into an icy warehouse in the dead of winter with Paul Maybury (The Pink Tiles, Rocket Science) to record the eight tracks that would eventually form their debut album. The record captures CABLE TIES in lockstep at the end of their first year of gigging – stretching their songs past breaking point, searching for that joyous rush. McKechnie’s captivating vocals tackle creeps, capitalist propaganda and music industry “tastemakers”. The result is 44 minutes of tense, smouldering punk rock that sits you down, shuts you up, and forces you to listen. Welding punk ferocity to the endless chug of kraut and boogie to produce a formidable rock ‘n’ roll trio.
Today we give a big warm welcome to Melbourne’s Hexdebt Ahead of their forthcoming album, Poison City Records are releasing their new single ‘Covenant’ – premiering tonight on PBS ‘Mixing Up The Medicine’ and offically out world-wide this Friday. Don’t miss them at HEXFEST/ Gasometer Hotel on November 5th and GIZZFEST – December 1st at Melbourne Showgrounds. Hexdebt are one of the most ferocious and engaging Australian bands right now. We’re delighted to be working with them!
Agnes Whalan on vocals and guitar, Isobel D’cruz Barnes on bass and backing vocals, Aife Larkin on guitar and Lucy Fry ondrums.
Crushing is exactly that: crushing. It’s an understatement to call Australian indie rocker Julia Jacklin’s 2016 debut Don’t Let the Kids Win impossibly impressive. But she still managed to deliver on exceed, even — the mountain of promised potential with her follow-up. Harnessing her uncanny penchant for the spacious, the haunting, the chilling, Jacklin spins fragility and crushing tenderness into the pointed emotional nuance and strength we all desperately long for.
Second single from my new album ‘Crushing’ which is out February 22nd
Courtney Barnett started Milk! Records in 2012 to release her first EP I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris. Soon aftercame the second EP How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose. She took her band overseas with a condensed back catalogue called The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas. In 2015 Barnett released album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit to worldwide critical acclaim.
“Small Talk,” is an outtake from Courtney Barnett’s 2018 album Tell Me How You Really Feel sounds a lot like most songs on the LP: an expansive, vamp-based affair with sunny choruses. Barnett’s hook-writing has only gotten sharper as time goes on. Where her early work would have been satisfied to let the interlocking organ/bass line groove ride for the entire runtime, here she injects an immediately felt, warmly rendered chorus of group singalongs. Her lyrics are, as always, sharp as a tack.
She takes the title seriously, regaling us with the shaggiest of shaggy-dog stories about whatever seems to float into her mind. “I’ve got a brother, Blake / he’s four years older than me / and I guess he always will be,” she sings, somehow managing to be both hilarious and weirdly philosophical. If she never got into business as a musician, Barnett could roundly kick all of our asses at this writing thing.
‘Charity’ is taken from Courtney Barnett’s album ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’
Released May 18th, 2018
Courtney Barnett – Guitar, Vocals
Bones Sloane – Bass, Backing Vocals
Dave Mudie – Drums, Percussion
Dan Luscombe – Keys, Organ, Guitar, Backing Vocals
Kim Deal – Backing Vocals (Tracks 5 and 7), Guitar (Track 7)
Kelley Deal – Backing Vocals (Track 7)
All songs written by Courtney Barnett
Methyl Ethel share ‘Scream Whole’; the first new music from the Perth act since their second record Everything Is Forgotten was released in March 2017.
Premiered yesterday on Australia radio station triple j’s Drive with Veronica & Lewis show, ‘Scream Whole’ is a nimble art-rock cut which Jake Webb describes as, “That cold sweat. That swollen throat. That sick feeling bubbling up from your guts. When midday moves dredge suppressed memories that scream for closure. What to do?”
The video was premiered via Consequence Of Sound – ““What’s the point/ Undo, undo again,” Webb wails against crystalline synths that electrify the senses and, upon disappearing, conjure a sense of chilly, awestruck isolation. Each word feels careful and deliberate, emerging with a concentrated effort from Webb’s mouth, which, fittingly, serves as the centerpiece of “Scream Whole‘s accompanying video. By the time the song descends into its woozy, drunken bridge, it’s stained in dirt and restrained with rope.”
Methyl Ethel is the musical project of Jake Webb with a five-piece live band that includes Thom Stewart, Chris Wright, Lyndon Blue and Jacob Diamond. Methyl Ethel has enjoyed phenomenal success in its native Australia in recent years. ‘Ubu’ along with fellow Everything Is Forgotten single ‘Drink Wine’. Methyl Ethel also won in the Best Album and Best Pop Act categories in 2017
‘Scream Whole’ is the new single from Methyl Ethel. Out now on 4AD Records:
“Pastel Blues” is the new single – the band’s Cameron Wade says “it’s the least serious thing we’ve written in years. It’s a playful exploration of the phrase on repeat in the chorus, “wondering how it feels bad to be good all the time”. It’s a really dumb set of words, but a funny thing to think about in depth. So we’re exploring that with this kind of wandering commentary, reconfirming that life would be super bland if we only ever did what we were told we should. I think you can almost feel the music taking a few steps back and lazily fall into line with the idea.”
I just love the spirit and the pace of this poppy groover. C’mon let’s all go out, swing in the streets and save this troubled world, at least today…The Attics claim it’s the least serious thing they have written in years and the whole song focuses around the phrase “wonder how it feels bad to be good all the time” and is an exploration of those words. ‘Pastel Blues’ is wrapped up in a nice little package, measuring three minutes and ten seconds long, containing catchy lyrics, cool guitar sounds and a heavier break-down towards the end.
Written and performed by The Attics
Berlin-based band Parcels today announce their self-titled debut album will be released on October 12th via Kitsuné/Because Music. The quintet have also shared their new single and video for Lightenup, was written in Berlin, the band’s home of choice. Originally from Australia, Louie Swain (synths), Patrick Hetherington (synths), Noah Hill (bass), Anataole Serret (percussion) and Jules Crommelin (guitar) moved to the German capital 3 years ago and have since gained an international fan base. After Daft Punk discovered them in 2016, they took the boys to the studio to collaborate on their single Overnight.
Like their previous releases, “Lightenup” lives and breathes the funky sound of disco music.
Recorded at Al Montfort (of Total Control/Terry)’s home studio, “Have A Cunning Plan” ups the fidelity a bit, tempering the up-front crunch of their previous demo/LP. The sonic space suits the band, allowing the unpretentious complexity of the songs & lyrics to generate the “oomph” rather than bludgeoning the listener with treble and feedback.
The album showcases ten new tracks by the band at their best; scrappy, self-destructive, stumbling and brilliant pop music that seems tossed off or nonchalant on the surface but is rife with rewards upon further listening. Early album bangers like “Molasses” and the first single “Work/Life, Gym Etc” are instant earworms, (as are “Straight Lines” & “Pyramid Scheme”, the latter reworked from a recent 7-inch) but it’s the simple-yet-sophisticated songcraft of tunes like “How Long?” or the languid strum of “Andrew Bolt” that are heavy on mood and are vehicles for vocalist/guitarist Miles Jansen’s erudite lyrics that simultaneously celebrate and decry the banality of life, while also tackling larger issues of colonialism conservatism’s effects on society at large.
Miles Jansen – vocals, guitar, melodica
Tristan Davies – bass, guitar, melodica
Louise Russell – keyboards, vocals
Ryan Coffey – drums, vocals
Chris Gray – guitar bass
The Dandelion weave an old kind of magic. A mix of musical spells not unlike those woven in the 1960’s.
With a sound like seeds turning into flowers
They bring gifts for the Goddess of magical powers
This song is from the album “ Old Habits New Ways of The Dandelion”
Written recorded and performed by Natalie de Silver in 2018
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