Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Rush to Relax
(Suppression Records/Shock)
For the past few years, Eddy Current Suppression Ring have been the sacred cows of the Melbourne rock scene, serving as the de facto figureheads of a resurgent garage rock movement and attracting nearly unanimous critical acclaim â despite the fact that theyâre quite unashamedly doing nothing new. Indeed, thatâs kinda the point â the bandâs four-to-the-floor rhythms, stabbing guitar riffs and guileless vocals belong to a lineage that runs through the underground â60s groups rescued from obscurity on the Nuggets and Back from the Grave compilations, via the Ramones to latter day exponents like the Detroit Cobras and the Dirtbombs.
What they do, they do very well, and itâs earned them a string of favourable reviews and near-untouchable status amongst the cognoscenti. But is it enough to make them one of Australiaâs best bands? Iâd say no, especially when they seem capable of so much more. Instead, despite an apparent wealth of talent and potential, they seem determined to plough a narrow furrow that ultimately lacks vision and ambition.
Nothingâs changed with this record in that respect â the self-penned presser that accompanies it is full of their trademark self-effacing humour, chuckling that the album contains, inter alia, âtwo ballads made for a man and his woman, two punkers to prove we are still keeping it mad real, and three self-indulgent jams that go for over six minutes eachâ.
The language is instructive, and the middle point is the key one â for all their larrikin shtick, you get the impression that âkeeping it realâ is deeply, deeply important to this band. Their commitment to unpretentiousness and being down-to-earth is laudable to an extent, but the whole diktat that you need to adhere to such conformist ideas isnât far away from the enforced orthodoxy of, say, the worst of the bluesânâroots scene, where authenticity is key and any sort of innovation is looked upon with suspicion. Real punk philosophy is about unrestrained self-expression; thereâs something depressing about this slavish devotion to the notion of purity via facsimile.
The frustrating thing about all this is that if Eddy Current were just shit, like a million other garage bands, it wouldnât really matter. But theyâre not. Theyâre clearly all excellent musicians, and also polished and talented songwriters, able to produce at ease catchy, cleverly-constructed, riff-driven songs that are worthy of the â60s garage sound they clearly love so dearly. The fact that this album was apparently knocked out in six hours is a testament to this â it sounds almost too easy. Why donât the band push themselves? Do something different? Something risky? Something interesting? Something new?
Notwithstanding all the above, the strings do seem to have been loosened somewhat with their third album Rush to Relax â but only somewhat. The result is a curious set of ten songs, one that both flirts with expanding the bandâs horizons beyond two-and-a-half-minute garage snarlers â generally with thrilling results â but ultimately remains mired in genre orthodoxy. The extended instrumental jams that push âTuning Outâ and âSecond Guessingâ beyond the six-minute mark are thrilling and invigorating, and are the moments on the album that seem to capture the band at their most unrestrained and exuberant.
The aforementioned presser suggests that Rush To Relax was recorded by a mixture of design and happy accident â âWe started to play really well and things sounded goodâĤ six hours later we had accidentally recorded 12 songsâ â and itâs at these moments that you really do feel that youâre listening in on some rip-roaring jam session, where the band abandon restraint and let themselves start creating something new and exciting.
Itâs gotta be said that the instrumental sections of these songs are all the more appealing for being, well, instrumental â while Brendan âSuppressionâ Huntley is a great frontman live, his mannered VB-on-helium vocals remain the bandâs least attractive feature on record, and the ballads where his self-consciously ingenuous lyrics come to the fore are the albumâs weakest moments (who else would think of trying to get away with lines like âI want to be your gentleman/I want to hold your handâ or âI know at times I can be a jerk/But deep down inside I want us to workâ?).
Similarly, paint-by-numbers songs like lead single âAnxietyâ or âIsnât it Nice?â, which ultra-talented guitarist/songwriter Mikey Young could probably knock out in his sleep, are perfectly competent but also fundamentally dull; why would I listen to this when I could go and listen to The Alarm Clocks, or Larry & the Blue Notes, or even the first Stooges album? Whatâs the point?
As a competent example of its genre, Rush to Relax is a winner â itâs polished, accomplished and well-executed. But there remains a sense that Eddy Current Suppression Ring are limiting themselves by operating within self-imposed genre constraints, like the early Ravonettes albums where Sune Rose Wagner would insist on everything being written and recorded in one key. Thereâs still a sense that thereâs a really great band threatening to break out here, if only theyâd stop keeping it so "real".
Tom Hawking