For anyone wondering whether Eddy Current Suppression Ring were feeling any extra pressure after the Australian Music Prize-winning success of their second album, 2008’s Primary Colours, cop this quote from guitarist Mikey Young, taken from the press release to the forthcoming follow-up, Rush To Relax…

“We grabbed our trusty half-inch 8 track and headed down to Revolver Rehearsals in Prahran to basically have a practice and record a couple of songs and see what was a good way to record our next album. However, we started to play really well and things sounded good that day in that shitty room. 6 hours later we had accidentally recorded 12 songs. I took them home and lo and behold they were pretty good. I mixed it in my bedroom over the next month and magically we had an album!”

Pretty romantic story, huh? Just like the whole history of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. They came together by accident, started selling out venues by accident, and now they’re making records by accident. It’s enough to make a struggling young band sick with envy.

With Rush To Relax due out February 19th, UB.com’s resident queue-jumper Danger Coolidge had a word or two(thousand) with Mr. Young…

How was the tour with Oh Sees, I saw the Annandale show but those guys were hanging round for a month or something?
Yeah, three weeks all up. It was great. I wish we could have done more shows with them. I went to a couple of the shows that we weren’t playing and it was nice to go along and watch them as a fan. I love that band. Their songs are real simple and catchy but they’ve got a unique sound about them with the dual vocals and stuff. And as people they were total sweethearts and I was in love with them. That always makes things a lot easier.

I think you did them a huge favour playing with them because the Annandale was packed when they played, which wouldn’t have happed otherwise.
Yeah, I mean their last show in Melbourne there was probably 200 people there and it was real good. But we did the Billboard show and there was like 900 people there. I guess our band has found ourselves in the position where we can play with bands we really like and maybe get more normal people exposed to ‘em. I feel it’s good that we can do that. Someone who has never heard of Thee Oh Sees before gets to hear them and love them.

It was good to see you guys playing the Annandale too. Seems like you always play venues that are too small in Sydney – why is that?
Yeah, we’ve been pretty rude to Sydney. Y’know, just booking ridiculous venues. Not because we’re pricks or anything, just because I dunno, maybe we sell ourselves short sometimes? I think we’re naturally scared of it getting too big and so we tried to keep a cap on it but after the last time we realised we can’t keep it up anymore. People will get pissed off if we keep playing these 150 size rooms. It’s hard to say how popular you are or how many people care about you, so I was pleased that it sold-out and so many people came down. To tell the truth, we did a gig at the Annandale a couple of years ago early on in our career with The Sailors and I didn’t really like the venue at first. I didn’t want to go back there. But I finally gave it a second chance and it was great actually, the owners were really sweet, so we’ll definitely go back again. I think we’re actually playing there again in April.

Rush To Relax sounds like a bigger leap stylistically than Primary Colours was from the self-titled LP – do you agree?
I guess we don’t realise it’s different because it’s all felt gradual to us. But there’s a couple of songs on there where I imagine dudes would go, “Oh shit, I don’t know about that one.” It’s funny; we were listening to an old jam tape of ours from like five years ago the other day and it had a twenty-minute song on it. So we always did that kind of stuff but when it came to finalising the songs for recording they’d be turned into three-minute songs. It’s hard to say what people are going to think. Seems like for every person that thought Primary Colours was better, a bunch of people thought the first one was better and they liked the lack of polish on that one. I don’t care, I’m just glad anyone likes any of our stuff.

In the press release you claim to have recorded the album by accident. Is that fair dinkum?
Last time we had the approach that we’d do everything the same as the first one only we’d do it in a better room. So I hired Sing Sing South in Melbourne for two days and I took my 8-track in and we recorded in a better-sounding room with better mics and stuff. And while that worked to an extent – people liked the record – I think we were just too aware of the fact that we were recording an album. So we just wanted to record it at a practice. We weren’t really even planning to record an album that day and I think it shows. I think there’s a better energy. Plus I’m better at recording now so I think I’m better at capturing the sound in my head on tape. This is probably the first record where I’ve sat back and gone, “Ah this is OK.” The other two I finished and I was like, “I don’t know if this is good or not?” and I’ve never listened to them again! Sometimes I’m surprised, I hear a song on the radio or somewhere and I go, “This is all right.”

You get a lot of love and respect overseas as well as locally, like the garage dorks at GonerFest really seem to appreciate you guys…
I think we got appreciation from garage dorks before we got appreciation from anyone else. I think the fact that I worked at the [Corduroy] pressing plant and the first thing we put out was a 7” and I was already trading records with a couple of dudes overseas – so it was a good start as far as garage nerd cred goes. And it’s just grown from there. We’ve been blessed with pretty great reviews from overseas. Since the UK release came out there’s been really good reviews from over there too, so we’ve just gotta get off our fat arse and capitalise on it and go over there. I don’t know, life gets in the way a lot.

England got both records at once, didn’t they?
Yeah, it was the first two records on one CD. It was put out by this label called Melodic, which is sort of a weird label for us to be on. I think they mainly put out like slightly indie electronica and stuff like that. But I like that. I sorta didn’t want to put it out through another garage label and just be just a normal garage band. I like the idea of it being thrust on different kinds of people.

I saw an online ad recently, I think it was for the upcoming GonerFest DVD, and you guys were up the top in big bold letters, massive, the first name in a big list of bands.
It could be for the Goner DVD. Those dudes have been so good to us and really gotten behind us and pushed the record pretty well over there. There was a bit of deliberation but we’ve decided we’re going to put this new record out through them in the States again because they are nice guys, it’s easy, we can just shake their hand and the deal is done.

What’s the drunkest you’ve been onstage?
I play OK drunk. Our drummer and bass player play less good. I think as the guitarist you can fuck up a bit more and still get away with it. I was pretty drunk at Meredith Festival last month. I drank a bottle of wine and I didn’t think we were playing too good so I had to ease the pain by continually drinking. I think I got better as the night went on. We went down really well and we had a great time. People were coming up to us afterwards going, “fuckin’ sickest gig ever!” I didn’t think we were that great. But I’ve got a friend who worked on the film crew there and he showed me a bit of the footage the other day and it didn’t seem as bad as I remember. Then again, I do tend to focus of the 2% of bad bits than the fact that the bulk of it was good.

Are you still involved in running Aarght! Records?
Aarght! has always been run by the four members of my other band, the Ooga Boogas, but I’ve actually taken the step of moving away from the label. Not because I don’t love the people and don’t love the label but I’ve got a bad habit of saying, “yes” to everything. I realised six months ago I was in too many bands, recording other bands, running the label, it was stressing the fuck out of me. I realised I had to start cutting down on things. If we [ECSR] put out a new record and tour a lot and go overseas, I’m going to have a busy year ahead. Between that and recording bands occasionally I just can’t have the time to do stuff for the label that I used to. So I just said to the other guys, “Maybe you should just run it? If not forever then at least for a while.” It’s a bummer. The label made a lot more sense when I was working at the plant. I had all that equipment at my disposal so it was like, I loved a band and I had the opportunity to put out a record for them.

I’m not surprised by that. You seem to be always doing stuff – I think on the vinyl reviews page of the last issue of UNBELIEVABLY Bad you were involved in – either playing on or producing or releasing – more than 3/4 of the things.
I saw that and I was sort of embarrassed really. I thought, I’ve gotta stop recording so many bands before I get totally sick of myself! I’m in a position right now where I don’t have a day job, which frees me up to do a lot of stuff that’s a bit more fun. I quit my job at the plant and I suddenly got busier than ever. When you give yourself more time… I was just recording so many bands this year, in between being in four bands myself. The idea of quitting a job to live a quieter live didn’t really work out. So I had to learn to say no.

Do you take notice of the things people say about Eddy Current on the internet?
I try not to because if I start paying attention to the good comments I’ll have to start paying attention to the bad ones as well. I’m happy if some people like us and I don’t expect that we could have gotten as big as we have and not have some people hate us and want to express that. That’s fine. I don’t like a lot of bands either. So I try not to think about what other people say too much. As long as we’re pleasing ourselves it doesn’t really matter. It seems the bigger it gets, the harder it is to please everyone. I probably took it to heart a bit at first. I was trying to make sure everyone was having a good time. Then I realised that certain things are out of my control. I’ve just gotta play a show and enjoy it and hopefully no one in the audience is being a fuckwit to anyone else – that’s the best I can hope for.

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DATES:
Friday 29th January – Laneway Brisbane: Alexandria St. off St Paul’s Terrace, Fortitude Valley
Saturday 30th January – Laneway Melbourne Footscray Community Arts Centre
Sunday 31st January – Laneway Sydney Sydney College of the Arts
Friday 5th February – Laneway Adelaide: Fowler’s Live, North Terrace
Saturday 6th February – Laneway Perth: Cultural Centre, Northbridge

Rush To Relax is out via Suppression/Shock Records on February 19th.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring MySpace: www.myspace.com/eddycurrentsuppressionring