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*Sunday, July 09, 2006

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EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING. Apparently that's the name given to a scientific occurance involving magnetic fields, conductors and some other crap I'll never understand, though it's also the name of a new-ish Melbourne band you'll be hearing a whole lot more of in the future. I caught them this Friday just passed at Revolver, of all places (yes, kicking and screaming all the way... it being a local chickenhead/yuppie a-hole haunt of some repute in Melbourne, if you don't know), and left so suitably impressed I feel it is my duty to inform you of their existence. Of course, I had seen them before on several occassions, but this time it really clicked: ECSR are one hell of a band, and in fact may just be the best currently operational rock unit in Australia today.

A four-piece w/ no apparent pretentions whatsoever, they've nailed a sound which no one in living memory has managed to perfect south of the equator. It's a weird beast to witness in the flesh. Singer, "Brendan Suppression", looks like Joe Blow on the street except he possesses the hilarious habit of always donning leather "singing gloves" on stage to screech with, yelps w/ an unfiltered Aussie accent and likes to do a great deal of his yelling off the stage. Like, in the audience. Bassist, "Rob Solid", looks like he should be playing in the Cockney Rejects, though he alarmingly plays his instrument arched at chest level - New Wave style - and with his fingers. It's a brave move, though his obvious enthusiasm pulls it off. Guitarist and occasional keyboardist, "Eddy Current", has the weediest guitar sound this side of Tom Verlaine, though w/ a booming rhythm section carrying most of the load, his rake-thin inflections serve a perfect decoration and, when needed, he strums out some hip-shaking power chords. Drummer, Dan Helada (and I believe that is his real name) makes me jealous w/ his skins prowess. Never too fancy with his fills, he is, as they say, the Human Metronome. He also has some nice tattoos. That's the band.

Their sound is a tough one to pin down, if only because it falls into approximately three different categories. Most of it falls roughly into a late '70s, minimal and aggressive punk vibe not too dissimilar to the debut long-player efforts from Wire and the Saints. It's clean and disciplined a la Pink Flag, though the 'Strine drawl has me thinking of no one else but a young Chris Bailey. The second element of the band sees them taking on a more conventional, though occasionally HC-paced, take on '60s beat/rave-up raunch of the Easybeats/Yardbirds mold. You'll stomp, shimmy, shake and have yerself a good time. Lastly, there are the moments when Eddy Current - that's the man, not the band - drops the guitar and takes up the keyboard. I drew a long bow to a friend on Friday night and told him such moments bring to mind the Screamers. I think I was full of it. Let me retract that statement and tell you that the third element of the band sees them delving into chintzy old-school keyboard-driven garage rock of the Seeds/? And The Mysterians ilk. That clears that up. They excel at all three.

So excited was I by the performance, the exhilaration of seeing a local Rock Band who not only wrote and performed such strong material with real guts, passion and lack of any pretention whatsoever in my own backyard, I hopped on down to Missing Link the next day and purchased one of the two 7"s they now have available. I would've bought them both, but one was out of stock. I settled for their self-titled 3-track EP on Corduroy, which deftly shows up all three elements of the band just discussed within its grooves: the art-punk, the freakbeat and the organ groove. Attending the show w/ Richard Stanley from Dropkick, who has just signed the band to release their just-recorded full-length debut on his label, I turned to him after the last chord was struck and said, "You know, I think you may just have a hit on your hands". He nodded his head and said some comment about the last song being a killer. I had to set him straight: "Not just that song, but the whole band, they're great! You should hassle Larry at In The Red about licensing them. Americans will love them". Of course I've been full of shit on many occasions before, but this time I think I'm right. ECSR are a band of perfect ingredients, all in the right doses. I don't write about contemporary "garage rock" much in these pages, because I rarely, if ever, listen to it. That's Jay over at Agony Shorthand's bag. He has the knowledge, the recordings and the writing skills to give the better bands way more justice than I can. I'm writing this as a wake-up call to all you foreigner types: your future favourite Australian band will be Eddy Current Suppression Ring.

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*Mink Jaguar, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, The Unfuckable
The Pony, Saturday 29 April 2006.

As we scampered into the Pony after a bike ride down the lingering ‘Games Lane’ nostalgia piece on Exhibition Street, we were greeted by the sight of the legendary John Spittles (Asteriod B-612, Johnny Casino’s Easy Action) on bass, and a vocalist doing more to advance the cause of the afro hair-style in garage rock circles than he might have intended. These were The Unfuckable, it became clear.

Most bands with swear-words in their name don’t trouble the listener with tales of weekends spent meandering through fields of daises, set to a thin, summery Californian guitar-pop soundtrack. And so it is with The Unfuckable. They punched out a compelling set of tight, balls-out rockers and the odd conversational ode (Day Off), and had the crowd moving early in the evening. It laid the foundation for a truly great night of loud, fun, sweaty rock ‘n’ roll with an atmosphere akin to a spirited 21st birthday shindig at the local footy club.

In hindsight, most people were there to see Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and with good reason. I for one haven’t seen them put in a dud performance yet. Their infectious, riff-laden garage repertoire provokes even the most whippet-like among us to crash around wildly in the pit (personal injury tally from this night: delayed blood nose at 7am the next day).

Singer Brendan Suppression’s earnestness and idiosyncratic gloves-on, one-eye-on-the-fret style is poles apart from the namby-pamby rock posturing of the growing number of woe-is-me, sculpted hair noise-rock bands in this town. He wanders through the crowd and sings about walking into town and finding a rose on the ground and ice-cream, among other things. It’s all straightforward brilliance without ever becoming stale or trite.

The set was drawn largely from their three 7 inch vinyl releases to date. Eddy Current stabbed away at his guitar, producing the contagious guitar work that constitutes much of the band’s sound, while drummer Dan Helada pounded the living bejesus out of his kit without forgetting to be clever and dextrous along the way. Rob Solid on bass rounded things out splendidly with a sharp groove and contributed more than his fair share to the inevitable fever that spread through the audience.

By the time the opening strains from the closer Get Up Morning were being bashed out, the Ring were smoking, the Pony was shaking and the landed gentry at the Melbourne Club up the road were setting aside their single malt whiskies to peer out onto Little Collins Street to see what all the hullabaloo was about. Live rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t get much better than this, and tonight’s performance will do nothing to lessen the fear of any band unfortunate enough to play after Eddy Current Suppression Ring in the future.

Front man of Sydney’s Mink Jaguar, Billy Quan, didn’t pretend that he wasn’t as overwhelmed as the rest of us with what had just transpired. His opening words included the admission “I’m scared”. And for a minute, they appeared to struggle to light the audience’s fire.

But like their automotive namesake, Mink Jaguar took their sweet time to warm up. Within two or three songs the crowd had ventured back to the front of the stage and was shaking its collective arse to the Jaguar’s high-octane versions of rock, country and rockabilly relics and originals. The infection spread and soon the smoky and dingy confines of the 2006 model Pony took on the look and feel of the Dubbo Country Women’s Association Dinner Dance 1959, in the most bodacious and non-straight way imaginable. Young men and women were boogieing and twisting and shouting like they’d accepted the inevitability of hip-replacement surgery and were comfortable about the prospect.

The set was strong and impassioned, and by the end of it, Mink Jaguar had unquestionably won over their southern audience and perhaps encouraged a few more of us to set off on an exploration of what our parents should have been listening to back in the day.

The only thing left for Mink Jaguar was to descend the torturous Pony staircase with their equipment (ably assisted by local volunteer roadies), load up their rented Ford Falcon station wagon and sail off home along the Hume. On the strength of tonight’s performance, many will hope that they visit their local rent-a-car and visit us again very soon.

Andy Cole.

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