Eddy Current SuppressionRing - Rush To Relax

Tue 23rd Mar, 2010 in Music Reviews

Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s third album comes with a heavy burden of expectation.

The band has two records of rapturously received rock on the resume and a well justified reputation as one of the most impressive live acts going, but this is the first Eddy Current album since winning the Australian Music Prize; the first since being praised on national television by ‘Dicko’; and their first, shock horror, to feature ‘proper’ cover art.

While the earlier records settled for monochrome cover art, Rush to Relax sees the band, fairly literally, testing new waters. The cover image ties in with the sounds of breaking waves and bird calls that close the record, but those masks obscuring their faces offer a tempting analogy for the changes in the bands approach.

This is still very recognisably an Eddy Current record, but things have also changed and the raw honesty of the band’s earlier work has been joined by a creative tension that isn’t as simple, or direct as on the earlier records.

They’re still knocking out their recordings cheaply and at lightening speed – the whole record was apparently the product of six hours in the studio – but Rush To Relax is definitely no rush job. Even a glance at the track listing reveals the tension and perhaps indecision at play in the album’s creation – with titles such as Second Guessing_, Anxiety and, of course, the contradictory title track.

Self analysis and indecision aren’t anything new for ECSR, think of their earlier tunes Which Way To Go or I Admit My Faults, however with Rush To Relax_ the pressure of living up to expectation seemingly acts as a theme for the whole record. Brendan “Suppression” Huntley’s voice is as unpolished as ever, but he desperately wants to please his fans and critics; he willingly concedes that he can be a jerk, pledges gentlemanly devotion but most of all he just wants to give voice to ‘the sort of feelings that [he] can’t explain’.

The band’s piss taking press release explains that the album features “two 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 each” and perhaps inevitably the tracks that don’t easily fit the three minute garage rock template have attracted the most attention. Though, despite the supposed changes to their approach, it’s not as though the band has suddenly lurched out into uncharted waters.

The opening cut and lead single Anxiety plays it safe by keeping ‘mad real’ and is as signature Eddy Current as Huntley’s famed glove. It’s the AMP winning, ARIA nominated sound of buzzing guitar, fuzzy bass and agitated vocals that’s practically impossible to hear without picturing Huntley prowling the stage. Burn also retains the old ECSR ‘formula’, though oddly the lyrics are self-referential rather than self-effacing – ‘When I first wrote these lyrics to this song, I was angry coz I thought you did me wrong’ – it’s a strangely jarring moment for a band whose lyrics have always been direct and honest. However the album’s pair of slower tracks, Gentleman and I Can Be A Jerk, both highlight Huntley’s voice and lyrics pleading for affection with unvarnished sincerity.

There’s nothing overwrought in the brief tale of anti-social awkwardness Walked into a Corner, but the song fails to make it to a full minute seemingly too embarrassed to continue. Isn’t It Nice proves that Eddy Current can still deliver a searing slice of garage rock and if it had been released in 2002, would have been favourably compared to the Vines and their new rock contemporaries ( at 73 seconds it’s mere three seconds shorter the Vines’ blistering hit Get Free ). Although the lyrics reveal that there’s more at play than mere garage riffs and barroom thrills.

The lyrics both celebrate and eviscerate, with lines about retro reliant bands ‘dug up from the dirt and stuck behind glass’. At first listen it’s a dose of generational bile aimed at an unnamed ‘fossil, a thing of the past’, however as it’s also a criticism that has been made of Eddy Current’s own sound it’s possible to hear the song as a reaction to criticism that the band has become constrained by their garage rock roots.

Tuning Out features typically unadorned and casual lyrics, but expands the ECSR template by settling into a bass driven groove before Mikey Young’s guitar and Huntley’s excited yelps return. Joining Tuning Out in the ‘self-indulgent jam’ category is the seven minute Second Guessing; the longest track here and the most significant departure from Eddy Current’s supposed signature sound.

The repetitive keyboard intro sets up a track that could have sprung from a NYC loft; perhaps if Suicide had worked with the Ramones rather than just playing gigs with them they might have produced something like this. The other lengthy track is the album closer and title track, which opens with an urgency underpinned by a jungle beat of tom-toms, but Huntley soon advises listeners to “slow down before you fall down” as the track fades into a soundscape of seaside ambiance.

Sometimes for things to stay as they are things have to change and that’s exactly what Eddy Current has done with this record. Any punters worried by the murmurs of change can relax; Eddy Current is still one of the finest bands in the country.

Rush To Relax is our now through Shock.