Jason McKee’s Reetoxa has been building toward this one for thirty years. “Bottle,” out June 19th, is, by his own account, the fifth song he ever wrote, penned in 1995 at fifteen years old, growing up in Frankston during the peak of grunge’s grip on Australian music, and deliberately shelved even then for a future “second album” he wasn’t yet in a position to make. Three decades later, that second act is finally happening, recorded at The Avenue studio in Cheltenham with producer Simon Moro, alongside bassist Kit Riley, guitarist James Ryan and drummer Peter Marin of 90s band Jet, a lineup McKee’s assembled from musicians who came up on the same era of alternative rock he did.
The backstory of the song is heavy. McKee has said it traces back to a night with his high school girlfriend Jody, rushing to help her friend Nicole retrieve medication her parents had locked away, a moment that pushed all three of them into conversations about escaping difficult home lives together. It’s a snapshot of teenage mental health struggles that, by McKee’s account, weren’t talked about openly in 90s Australia, and the song carries that weight into its lyrics rather than softening it for the retelling.
What’s notable is how much care went into finally getting it recorded right. Moro reportedly got invested enough to master it himself, and Ryan took McKee’s original guitar sketch and built it into something considerably bigger, described as an “epic” sound from five players who all share the same alternative rock foundation. It’s the kind of full-band chemistry a song like this needed, since a track written on a teenager’s limited means finally gets the fuller treatment McKee always heard in his head. There’s real momentum building around Reetoxa right now, with label conversations underway and a European and UK tour reportedly taking shape for later this year. So it’s a very exciting time to be a Reetoxa fan.
