Methyl Ethel’s new EP Hurts To Laugh is out now via Dot Dash Recordings / Remote Control Records. To celebrate the release of Hurts To Laugh the band have shared an Instagram filter which utilises the stunning EP artwork by Loribelle Spirovski. Try and share the Instagram filter via this link.
Hurts To Laugh marks the ongoing output of Methyl Ethel 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.
‘Majestic AF’ stumbles into its bubbling oscillator and analogue polyrhythms, while a kick-free drumbeat marches right into an atonal synth melody supporting Webb’s equally idiosyncratic falsetto.
Hurts To Laugh was recorded at the same time as 2019’s Triage and both releases feature cover art by Sydney-based artist Loribelle Spirovski. Triage was Webb’s third and final album in a trilogy of obliquely expressed relationship drama, starting with 2015’s Oh Inhuman Spectacle which features certified ARIA Gold single ‘Twilight Driving’. 2017’s Everything Is Forgotten birthed the sensational single ‘Ubu’ which is now certified ARIA Platinum.
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.
Rescheduled dates for Methyl Ethel’s American tour (supporting Peter, Bjorn & John) and intimate Australian solo EP tour have been announced. Methyl Ethel will tour USA and Australia starting late September through October – including sold-out shows in Sydney & Melbourne. The full band will also appear at Splendour In The Grass. The full run of updated tour dates linked below.
Stream/Download Methyl Ethel – Hurts To Laugh via methylethel.lnk.to/
