#97

#97. Methyl Ethel - Scream Whole (#65, 2018)

9th of 2018

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I'm very fascinated by the way some songs don't say their titles. When you're not really down in the depths of music knowledge, it can be an easy way to communicate knowledge. You might not have ever looked at the meta data, but when someone says "Mambo No. 5" or "Uptown Funk" (#252), everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. They're the kinds of songs that Jeopardy! I feel likes to ask about because no one wants to see someone get pinged for saying it a little incorrect. No matter how popular the shorthand is, the John Denver song is in fact called "Take Me Home, Country Roads". In that case though, he does say the actual title, even in the right order. It gets a little messier when you deviate from that. I'll bet there are a lot of people who think Kings of Leon have a song called "Your Sex Is On Fire".

Methyl Ethel feel like absolute masters in this art of deception. I look through all the songs of theirs I have in my music library and the songs that actually just say their titles are almost outnumbered by the ones that feel like they do, but don't actually. The song "One and Beat" actually says 'One and *the* beat'. "Trip the Mains" says 'You're tripping the mains'. I was half expecting to find out they actually say 'Ruin her' on "Ruiner". They do also enjoy making songs whose titles don't come up at all, in fact one of them will notably appear later on this list. As for now, we're ready to talk about "Scream Whole", and how they actually say 'Scream, I'm whole'. But wait, they're not done, because they also say 'Screamed whole' afterwards. I'm not mad about any of this, because it suitably does help me remember which song is which, I just can't believe how many times they do it. Oh and the other funny thing is that I keep calling Methyl Ethel a group, but they're not really, as Jake Webb is the main creative force behind it all. It's a Western Australia thing, I guess.

The strange thing is that I find myself looking back at "Scream Whole" in hindsight and considering what happened afterward. For the uninitiated, this is the last entry they ever had in the Hottest 100. At the time it felt like they were going from strength to strength. This was the lead single to their 3rd album that came out late in the year and still managed to sneak onto the list. By all accounts, you'd expect more hits to come when the full thing came out, and it just didn't happen. They didn't even get close; the story just abruptly ends there. It's all so abrupt that it feels like the best explanation is just label shenanigans. Methyl Ethel were never signed to a major label, but instead a subsidiary of Inertia (which has close ties with Warner). It feels like they pulled out all the stops for them initially, but then quickly backed off. I'm not sure when exactly Methyl Ethel parted ways with their label (they were pushed off the current acts listing on Remote Control's website at some point in 2021) but they were on with Future Classic for the next album in 2022. It's possible they weren't seeing eye to eye, but you can certainly feel the lack of coverage for Methyl Ethel ever since then.

It's a shame because the music has stayed very potent I think. I actually voted for Methyl Ethel in the 2019 countdown because "Trip the Mains" landed so well with me. A great bit of art pop with addictive building tension. Chalk it up as another case where I reckon they nailed it and it's met with a national shrug. At the very least, we were on the same level for "Scream Whole", which while I wouldn't put it at the top of the tower, has remained a very potent single with strong replay value.

It's a song that delivers on a pretty simple principle. Give us a nice riff, give us a nice hook, and you're mostly set from there. It's not just that though, and I can feel it in the rest of me that there's more than just the taste on my tongue. I find myself most addicted to the little things in the song, like the way the quiet & loud dynamics are managed. The song gets remarkably peaceful for big portions, it's produced very cleanly and you never feel like you're being barraged by anything. I love the little variations in how the hook is delivered, how there's more force to it when the music comes back in. The song also has a nice bridge if you consider the different lines that come in towards the end. Most importantly though, I love the creaky wheel sound they've got going on here. I don't even know if everyone else even notices it, but it comes up sometimes in the instrumental break and feels like the defining moment of the song for me. Just a rickety ride that nonetheless always reaches its destination.