Eddie Current Supression Ring | Fed Square
The Fed Square booker deserves a raise. Out of hibernation after years away, Eddy Current Suppression Ring reenter the music scene at another excellent free show at Fed Square. Formed in Frankston in the early 00’s, Eddy Current and their seminal album Primary Colours have proved eternal, and they made a triumphant return in Melbourne on Grand Final Eve, after almost 15 years since their last major tour, and 6 years since their last major show at Golden Planes 2019.
My Grand Final Eve public holiday began watching One Battle After Another at IMAX (excellent movie) and attending artist Aisha Hara’s opening at Caves Gallery in the Nicholas Building. Talking to a friend in the stairwell they said Eddy Current Suppression Ring is playing at Fed Square that evening, which I hadn’t heard, much to my excitement. I wasn’t able to get a ticket to their impromptu Nightcat show in July, and for a band with many fans who, like myself, have never gotten the chance to see them live, a free show is a gracious gift.
The music begun at 7pm with Wrong Way Up, a dancey duo who played a sort of disco synth house set, an interesting act. Our group left during their last song to go to the bottle shop across the road, and we spent the next hour drinking beer by the Yarra along with 50 or so other people doing the same. By 9:30 we moved back up the stairs and took up spots at the back of the now sprawling crowd as Eddy Current began with their biggest track, Memory Lane.
Musically sparse, the minimal 4 piece build with subtlety into their songs. Memory Lane starts with a power chord, and the driving guitar rarely plays a full chord in the entire set. They play laid back punk music, with earworm guitar lines and rough one-take vocals. A real bands’-band. There is almost no patter, and their 70+ minute set was unadulterated, relentless garage punk.
The bass player ‘Rob Solid’ wears a classic fisherman’s hat and has the stage presence of every good bassist, keeping his body mostly still and emoting only with his neck and head. The lead singer ‘Brendan Suppression’ is wearing gloves with a white ring on the back hand and a long sleeve undershirt. All the girls I’m with comment on the outfit. After the first couple of songs the band are locked in, and the excitement continues to heighten in the square.
Colour Television, with its rambling verses and its fast, heavy chorus is excellent. The big screens play back the band with increasingly eccentric video effects, and the song ends to loud and grateful cheers. The crowd is chipper where I am up the back and the square is packed, and security are less intrusive than they were at the start. Around us everyone is drinking and smoking in the open air, and the evening is cool but not cold.
Halfway through the next song Brendan Suppression enters the crowd and pops up a minute later on top of a shipping container in the middle of the square to finish the song with Flinders St station and the Melbourne skyline behind him. The overflowing square is heaving up the front, and the band launch into Which Way to Go, another hit which sends arms and legs popping up in front of the stage as crowd surfers cycle through the barriers. We’re in the middle, and as the wave of the expanding mosh pit starts to break in front of us my girlfriend climbs on my shoulders, and the band plays my personal favourite I Admit My Faults.
The mood is high all across the square, and they close out their set with Rush to Relax. The band all triumphantly finish their beers on stage to prolonged applause.
A gig that felt like a definitive re-debut for a classic Melbourne band who have been sorely missed, and appear to have lost nothing of what brought them their former glory.