Album Review: Methyl Ethel - Everything Is Forgotten

Jake Webb must be drinking from the same enigmatic elixir that runs in Perth's tap water and out of Kevin Parker and Luke Steele's kitchen taps.

On Methyl Ethel's second album Everything Is Forgotten, art-pop and psychedelic eccentricities weave with Webb's androgynous, disarming vocals to create the familiar reverbed dreamscapes from 2015's Oh Inhuman Spectacle, this time with tighter stitching. 

Surrealism and absurdist concepts co-exist with '80s synths, polyrhythmic flourishes and Webb's slippery falsetto, promising an overall unity that previous releases lacked, thanks to his work with producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Foals). Imagery-sodden lyricism pairs with ironically inane observations, tracks like Ubu simultaneously offering up self-flagellation and the driving chorus "Why'd you have to go and cut your hair?"

Rather than land you in the dingy, depraved 3am hours, twitching your way through abandoned city streets at the tail-end of a nocturnal trip, Everything Is Forgotten soothes and stills. Shimmery — sometimes sinewy, often dazed — guitars accompany Webb's shapeshifts, transitioning from a minstrel on the stripped-raw ballad Act Of Contrition, to an apparition cooing morbid, sweet nothings on No. 28 — "Listen for me in a very beautiful car accident/Now we're mangled up together". Magnetic touches of glam-rock and shiny pop repetition break up the weirdness of distorted alien soundscapes (Femme Maison/One Man House) and whirring, vibrating motifs (L'Heure Des Sorcieres). Lo-fi tracks through the tail-end drop the intensity to the point of claustrophobia, leaving us aching for more frenetic pop.