Some songs take longer to arrive than others. Bottle, the latest single from Melbourne project Reetoxa, was written in 1995, when songwriter Jason McKee was a fifteen-year-old and this was only the fifth song he had ever written. Three decades later, it finally has the recording he always imagined for it.
The song is drawn from a real night in McKee’s teenage years: he and his high school sweetheart Jody racing to help her best friend Nicole reclaim medication her parents had locked away. Out of that urgent, frightening evening came a song about friendship, loyalty, and two young people talking about breaking free of their circumstances toward something better. McKee has said that being the same age as Silverchair’s members at the time, he sometimes wonders what would have happened if he had scraped together the money to record it in 1995, and in the same breath jokes that he is glad he did not make it at fifteen, given what the music industry does to teenagers on their first tour.
The Single
For the recording, McKee assembled a serious lineup: Kit Riley on bass, James Ryan on guitar, and Peter Marin, known from the 1990s band Jet, on drums, with production by Simon Moro at The Avenue studio in Cheltenham, Victoria. McKee has also noted one surprising production decision that stuck: Moro cut half of the second verse during recording, a call McKee did not expect but came to agree served the song.
Reetoxa itself is McKee’s return to music after nearly three decades of life in between, a project rooted in the 1990s alternative rock that shaped him. His second album, Soliloquy, gathered twenty-six songs written across his life into one autobiographical double album, and Bottle continues that project of finally giving his oldest material its proper home. A new album is already in the works, with recording scheduled for July and August 2026.
Final Thoughts
Bottle is a thirty-year-old song written by a teenager and delivered by the adult he became, with a band capable of doing it justice. That long arc, from a frightening night in 1995 to a Melbourne studio in 2026, is the story here, and it is a genuinely good one. Hear how it turned out for yourself.
Bottle is out now. Stream it on Spotify and Apple Music. Follow Reetoxa on Instagram, Facebook, and at reetoxa.com.
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