Sitting down with Bryget Chrisfield ahead of the release of 'Triage', the final album in a Methyl Ethel triptych, Jake Webb admits, "I never really intended to talk about my personal life to strangers."
"Methyl Ethel began as a personal challenge. I wanted to see if I could write, record and release some music before the band I was in at the time finished doing the same. I did and subsequently withdrew from some close friends. Relationships were severed, I severed some even closer ones. This all played out in such a public way, as it invariably does, so I withdrew more" - Jake Webb.
So begins Webb's personal statement ahead of the release of Methyl Ethel's upcoming third album, Triage, the final album in a triptych that started with Oh Inhuman Spectacle (2015) and continued with Everything Is Forgotten (2017). When asked to elaborate, Webb - who sits across a table inside Collingwood's Grace Darling Hotel, taking thoughtful sips from his beer - observes, "It's funny, 'cause no one really knows that." (Until now, that is.) "I guess group work can be a challenge, not because of the clashes of personality so much as, if you're someone who likes to get stuff done quickly, there can be a disconnect, so that was the frustration of wanting to see something finished. And then I literally just thought, 'I'm gonna record a bunch of songs.' And secretly I was like, 'I bet I'm gonna be able finish this before my band – before we can get our shit together enough to, like, put it out.' Sorry, guys," he adds.
"The motivator was that competitiveness with yourself and that's the way that I sorta work best. I'm very much someone who if someone says that I can't do it, it gives me more motivation to try... I knew I could do it, you know? I knew I'd be able to make that record and put it out. And it sounds so cheesy, but it's, like, I kind of believed in myself, you know what I mean? And I still do. I'm very grateful to feel like that.
"Because that's all that I know... I've just taught myself everything and learned bits and pieces from other people, so that's probably what's the most thrilling about it is when you sort of feel like a fraud, 'Does anyone know that I have no idea what I'm doing?' You know?"
So is Webb ever plagued by crippling self-doubt? "It's there, but it's not that crippling," he acknowledges. "I doubt it when [an album is] finished. That's when you think, 'Wait a second...' That's when that self-doubt creeps in."
He wears a neat navy short-sleeved shirt with a spotty multicoloured all-over pattern and fidgets a bit while he speaks, as if this helps crystallise his thoughts.
In his aforementioned personal statement, Webb describes Methyl Ethel's debut long-player as the, "why me?/fuck you/sorry," album of the triptych, with its follow-up, Everything Is Forgotten, responding, "who cares? all your emotions are irrational and meaningless anyway." In conclusion, for Triage, Webb asked himself, "What is important? What requires attention?"
"Especially with these last three albums, I'm talking about things that I need to get off my chest," Webb reveals. "Like, I haven't even realised that that's what I've been doing as well. So I'm only now starting to be able to look back and maybe understand where that's all coming from, like a psychoanalytical kind of thing, you know?"
Webb's solo musical project, Methyl Ethel, expanded into a five-piece for initial live performances, but once the band started booking gigs outside of Perth they trimmed down to a three-piece "because we couldn't afford to fly any more than just that", Webb laments. But Methyl Ethel has now reverted back to a five-piece live incarnation rounded out by Thom Stewart, Chris Wright, Lyndon Blue and Jacob Diamond. "It's good having five members now, we can start to open up more of that spontaneity and really kind of get back to being five humans playing music together and seeing what happens," Webb enthuses. Although all current band members are originally from Perth, Stewart and Blue are now Melbourne-based, Webb confirms.
"All I know is my experiences and sometimes they're so personal that it's kinda frightening to talk about because I never really intended to talk about my personal life to strangers."
While working on Triage in his West Perth home studio, Webb says he became obsessed with delving deeper into some of his favourite songs by other artists, essentially trying to work out exactly what it is that makes them so special. "How often do you hear something - or you re-hear something - like, I dunno, an ABBA song will come on, and it kind of blows you away, and you think, 'What is it about this song?' - I go and work out how it's composed, and how the harmonies work, and I'll look into it in real detail to see if I can kinda find something or, you know, chase that magic.
"And then there's this sonata, I think it's by Jean Sibelius - you know when something just grabs you?"
On his songwriting process for the new Methyl Ethel album, Webb offers, "I definitely spent a lot more time writing lyrics and really, really pouring over them [as much as] I would have the melodies and all the other elements of it, but it's when I am interviewed that I actually talk about it. So, in myself, it's like I need to prepare to be able to talk about what the lyrics are about as well, which is sorta interesting because sometimes it unpacks things, other times it seems like I'm forcing explanations onto things when I don't even know exactly what they're about.
"All I know is my experiences," he continues, "and sometimes they're so personal that it's kinda frightening to talk about because I never really intended to talk about my personal life to strangers, but also sometimes it's a little unfair on the people I'm actually talking about in the songs or if I'm talking about someone's personal view on myself, you know? So I'm getting more used to the fact that that's maybe something that's okay to kinda open up about."
When asked whether anyone in his life has ever identified themselves in a Methyl Ethel song and wanted to have a chat to him about it, Webb ponders, "Ah, not yet. There's some people I'm overdue to maybe reconnect with and, yeah! [Laughs] We'll see."
Webb co-produced Everything Is Forgotten, Triage's predecessor, with James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco and admits, "I learnt quite a bit over the shoulder of James Ford, 'cause he's really savvy with the way he uses synthesisers – just things like building sounds."
Triage contains some keys parts you'd swear Webb played on a harpsichord, but he explains, "I played a lot of electric piano and it's just like a digital replication of a harpsichord. I like the attack of the harpsichord, it's really beautiful.
"I think the piano is just the ultimate instrument – you could erase every instrument, or all music, and just have the piano and it would be okay, you know? Everything would be fine. I listen to a lot of classical music - but, like, popular classical music; not too deep - so any time I can sit and write at a piano, yeah! The melancholy suits my style," he laughs.
This story was originally published in the February issue of The Music. Pick up a copy of it on the street now or head here to read it online.
