Methyl Ethel, the brainchild of WA producer Jake Webb, has shared a new single titled ‘Talk Louder’. Listen below.
Speaking of the song, which was released yesterday (June 13), Webb said in a press statement that ‘Talk Louder’ arose as “a reaction to the album [he] just finished”, referencing the six-piece live band’s 2022 LP, ‘Are You Haunted?’
“I wanted to just make something fresh and free spirited, without too much thought, be instinctual,” Webb said. “This, in part, is definitely a reaction to the album I just finished, which I worked on for about two years. The whole song, lyrics and all came out very stream-of-conscious, nothing was written down.”
The track is accompanied by a lyric video, and sees the frontman pair his signature falsetto with dance-ready rhythms. ‘Talk Louder’ comes ahead of Methyl Ethel’s upcoming appearance at 2022’s Splendour in the Grass, where they’ll take to the stage alongside fellow lineup entrants Amyl And The Sniffers, Ruby Fields and Baker Boy, among others.
Released as a standalone single, ‘Talk Louder’ follows Methyl Ethel’s fourth studio album, ‘Are You Haunted?’, which was released via Future Classic in February of this year. The album was previewed by the Stella Donnelly-assisted lead single, ‘Proof’, and was listed on NME’s top 15 best Australian albums of the year so far.
Relating to the stream-of-consciousness lyricism of ‘Talk Louder’, Webb said in an interview with NME that, post-’Are You Haunted’, his projects will “step away from that ‘teen songwriting’ approach.
“My songs are always a search for answers, rather than a Wikipedia entry. I’m asking the questions just as much as anybody else,” Webb said.
Methyl Ethel’s Splendour in The Grass set will bookend the band’s string of festival appearances this year. In March, Methyl Ethel performed at Victoria’s Meadow festival alongside fellow headliners Hiatus Kaiyote and Tropical Fuck Storm, and later enlisted Pond for a joint headline show in his homestate of Perth.