Eddy Current Suppression Ring

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Customer reviews
Press release

4...according to our Mike on Wed 07 Dec, 2011.

Over the past few years, the antipodean troupe known as Eddy Current Suppression Ring have, along with Thee Oh Sees, pretty much become the gold standard against which garage rock is measured. Their mix of snottiness and enthusiasm is pretty hard to resist and their zero-budget albums have been consistently brilliant. No surprise, then, that they're now treating us to a double LP full of miscellaneous non-album bits and pieces from throughout their career to date. It starts off a little bit shakily with some synth-led bedroom recordings that I found a bit of a struggle (but Business Lady really liked them...make of that what you will), but after that it's straight onto that obnoxious lo-fi Stooges-esque punk that I like best from them. There's a few songs I've never heard, and there's a few great alternate versions of things from the albums. Not everything on here is perfect by any means, but as far as these odds-and-sodds collections go the standard remains pretty high...I'd say I feel positive about at least 80% of the material here, and if you're a fan of the band it's hard to see this anthology being a disappointment, since in its better moments (and there are plenty) it has all the rough-around-the-edges charm that makes this band's other albums so addictive.

They've drawn comparisons to Wire, Can, The Fall, Fugazi and The Stooges. They have a singer who wears black gloves to overcome stage fright. They won the $30,000 Australian Music Prize for their 2008 album Primary Colours-then recorded the next one themselves in a few hours in their practice space and spent the dough on a photo shoot for the album cover. They do not care about you and your expectations. You could call them "fiercely independent" but they don't seem fierce at all. Quietly, and definitely on their own terms, Eddy Current Suppression Ring has become a force in underground music. Now, after three albums, it's time for a compilation of singles tracks, demos and other stuff they had lying round. Turns out there was lots to choose from-and even after trimming, they ended up with a double album. Goner Records is happy to provide So Many Things.

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