Methyl Ethel has always been an expression of the subconscious. Born in the heat of the Australian summer, the early recordings were built from the ground up in various bedrooms and friends' studios; the same spaces Jake returned to for Triage, the third album in a triptych he started with Oh Inhuman Spectacle (2015) and continued with Everything Is Forgotten (2017), which was named Best Independent Album by AIR, the Australian Independent Record Labels Association.
Magic runs throughout Triage, not in the spiritual sense, but in the practical application; the process of making something extremely difficult look easy, the practice of concealing your tracks to maximise the shock and awe of the reveal. Practising magic tricks is also how Jake and mixing engineer Marta Salogni spent the downtime as they finished the album in London.
In clinical terms, Triage is "the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients", a truly apt analogy for growing up, making a record, and making a record about growing up.