When Eddy Current Suppression Ring formed
in Melbourne, Australia, in 2003, band mates Eddy Current,
Rob Solid, Danny Current and Brendan Suppression thought
they would perhaps play a few shows and record a 7-inch
or two. One of their first gigs, in fact, was an employee
Christmas party at the record pressing plant where they
worked. Nine years later, ECSR is recognized as one
of the indie music scene’s sleeper hits of the
decade, racking up accolades from the likes of Spin
Magazine, London’s Guardian newspaper, and the
Australian Independent Record Labels Association.
The band’s third album, Rush To Relax, is already
one of the most anticipated releases of 2010. Cut last
August, during a marathon six-hour session at Melbourne’s
Revolver Rehearsal Studios, Rush To Relax combines stripped-down
post-punk sensibilities with the sheer exhilaration
of a four-man musical unit that has created its own
language, and will never run out of new things to say.
While ECSR’s sophomore release, 2008’s Primary
Colours, draws on what Guardian music critic Tom Hughes
described as “fast’n’fuzzy garage
rock,” Rush To Relax employs a pop ethos that’s
most familiarly exported from Dunedin, New Zealand,
and parlayed here via dazzling surf riffs and precise
rhythms. The geographical tug is most prevalent on “Anxiety,”
the new album’s lead single, which, in many ways,
is a guitar-driven homage to the Clean’s whimsical,
scene-launching debut “Tally-Ho.”
The frantic pace of “Anxiety” is somewhat
of an anomaly for Rush To Relax, a shape-shifter of
an album that has already garnered comparisons to Television’s
1977 landmark debut, Marquee Moon. Like that classic
group, ECSR harnesses tension and propulsion to blast
past the barriers of everyday tedium. With Rush To Relax,
ECSR unequivocally succeed.
Rush To Relax will be available domestically via Goner
Records on March 16, 2010.
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