Eddy Current Suppression Ring + Tame Impala

What a great idea for the Melbourne Zoo to branch out from its usual fare of summer concerts featuring jazz, world music and geriatric cover bands into more contemporary rock sounds. That is, if you can actually classify Tame Impala as “contemporary”. But I’ll get to that in due course.

I arrived nice and early to take advantage of the hour-and-a-half before show time to wander around the zoo and check out some of its residents. Well, at least the ones who hadn’t retired to their respective burrows, hutches and nests after a hard day at the office.

Being unable to locate the otter enclosure, the first sight of an actual animal we encountered was a very unimpressed looking zebra mare, who promptly mooned us and released a never-ending stream of urine in our general direction. Charming! The reptile house was popular with hipster parents trying to impress their boared-looking offspring, while sad emu kids stared intently at empty cages, trying to spot the black panther.

Zoo staff put on a special lion-feeding show. We overheard a few jibes involving Tame Impala being released into the lions’ den, but alas, this obviously didn’t get the thumbs up from the Humane Society and the big cats had to make do with half a goat each. Oh deer.

Eventually, people gathered on the lawn in front of the stage, unrolling their picnic rugs and cracking open their BYO beverages. The crowd was composed of all-age groups – from grizzly old men in vintage Ramones T-shirts to families and 15-year-old mogans proudly sipping their passion pop like they invented underage drinking. Too bad there was no actual security staff present who they could defy – it pretty much took all the fun out of striking rebellious poses.

We were lion back on our blanket, refreshments in hand, as Tame Impala took to the stage. Not having seen them before, the first thing that struck me was just how young they are. This makes it doubly baffling that their range of influences and inspirations all seem to date back 30-40 years. Let’s face it, what these guys play isn’t “dad-rock”, it’s “grandpa-rock”.

While their indebtedness to Cream, The Doors and Blue Cheer has already been noted elsewhere, my companion hit the nail on the head when she detected a touch of Blue Oyster Cult in Tame Impala’s psychedelic rock wig-outs. The most contemporary reference we could dredge up was during a guitar part which sounded suspiciously like the solo from ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers.

We pondered just what exactly an audience of 19 year olds would get from this music, as to our jaded ears it appeared way too laid back to act as dance floor fodder, yet the extended instrumental passages weren’t really psychedelic or improvised enough to measure up to the Ummagumma-era Pink Floyd-isms they were probably aspiring to.

Maybe it was due to the fact that singer/guitarist Kevin Parker had a cold and was feeling rather pawly, but his horse voice wasn’t really up to the tusk. Better was his kazoo solo, but it made me wonder what the band would sound like with a sharp horn section to lend poignancy to its riffs. Still, as musicians these guys are definitely talonted, so I won’t rabbit on about their derivativeness any more here.

While proceedings had been very laid-back up to this point, during Tame Impala’s final number some pioneering kids got up the courage to start dancing down the front of the stage. Within seconds, a whole bunch of my-first-rock-concert teens followed suit and nervously started to shimmy in one tightly packed herd. As in a nature documentary, those on the periphery of the group anxiously peered over their shoulders occasionally, just in case a marauding pride of lions was waiting to pick off the weakest member of the group during a momentary lapse of vigilance.

As Tame Impala’s last chord echoed down a wormhole from 1968, they hadn’t exactly tortoise how to rock, but their particular brand of retro-vision had certainly been bearable enough.

After a brief interval and an opportunity to make a beeline for the snaking queues for the toilets, it was time for the mane act, Eddy Current Suppression Ring(tail possum).

Looking incredibly unglamorous in his navy blue board shorts, Mikey Young plugged in his guitar and within seconds of the first song, a large section of the expectant audience was going hog-wild. Whereas Tame Impala had had a relatively, er, tame mix, ECSR sounded brash, bright and ready for action from the get-go.

Clearly the band were enjoying themselves in this unusual environment. Being in a large outdoor space, and starting relatively early in the night, meant that the meat-head factor that has marred some of their more recent shows, was not as pronounced. True, there was the requisite crowd surfing, shoe throwing and beer spraying, but the overall feeling was good-natured.

The two security staff on duty probably had no idea what they were in for and wisely decided to just leave the crowd to do their own thing, which consisted of a lot of male bonding, acting the goat, and touching each other in ways that must have felt pretty good (judging by the looks of ecstasy I could make out).

Being left to bop along in relative peace a few meters to the left of the mosh, I was able to reflect on the absolute marvel that is ECSR’s music. Here are four average-looking blokes who play music that draws from various relatively obscure sources, yet they are hugely popular with alternative-mainstream crowds.

ECSR don’t panda to the audience by playing lowest common denominator radio rock, but instead garner the much-coveted seal of approval from rock nerds by combining all the best elements of ’60s garage rock, punk and post-punk and melding them into something otterly unique. In a way, they are the missing lynx between The Kinks, Wire and Joy Division, yet the kids treat them like the bee all and ant all.

After a hugely enjoyable and totally nuts set, which took in songs from both their albums and saw some of the band members’ young sprogs invade the stage to do cute dances and karate moves, there was a brief paws to catch our breath, before a final encore.

Despite the fact that there had only been two bands, by the end nobody felt that they had been cheetah’d out of their money. It was like a mini-festival, without all the crap things that are usually associated with festivals. Plus, of course, lots of aminals. Who could asp for more?

by René Schaefer