Sic Alps

Sic Alps

She’s On Top

Drag City

***Orange Sunshine! Blue Diamonds! Black Potatoes! “She’s On Top” is a 12" single, a B-12-booster shot extract straight from the heart of SIC ALPS to the inner lining of your own poor broke-crippled ripcage ribself. This is how the other half lives, laughs and loves! It’s fun and exciting, a picture from the airplane! Sic Alps are like you. They’re your friends—the better, smarter, faster, stronger ones! When they get back from their run, they’re friendly and will show you how the guitar works. Whoops, they picked it up and three songs fell out. Time for a single! A 12" single, to show the world the steel-plate resolve and wide, sparkling decks of the good ship Sic Alps. These three guns is all they need. And now they’ve maneuvered into the power position! “She’s On Top” will send you up shaking, laughing so hard you’re crying, and how you come down depends on your chemistry! Shards of pop...we may need pincers. And the video’s gonna kill! “Carrie Jean” is a noirish creeper, another one about girlish allure etc. LOOKOUT, it’s comblicated. Now, “Biz Bag”...whoa. Blew the door open, jet-blast style, finishing with a bitter kiss ‘n’ giggle. What’s in this one? A new genre: power-brisk. And it’s all wrapped in a gay 12" single sleeve inspired by and incorporating a Digger’s photograph. (STREET DATE - 5/21/2013)

Sic Alps

S/t

Drag City

***The fifth album from San Francisco’s beloved SIC ALPS. Aiming for the toppermost of the poppermost, Sic and the gang wave their mangled wand—and lo! The hits just keep on a-comin'. Self-titled just it's just their selves. This could be the album of the year—doesn't matter what year you're reading this either. Sic Alppeal is eternal.(STREET DATE - 9/18/2012)

Sic Alps

Pangea Globe

Drag City

***We was spending time with SIC ALPS the other day—staying inside, playing sides—and we got on a Tronics run. Sic Alps ain’t collectors or anything…they know their stuff, but not to the point where they live in a museum. Be that as it may, those old Tronics singles are all right by the stereo, pretty much like a part of the décor. And the same goes within the Sic sound as well. Maybe a secret weapon we’re revealing here, but they’ve got more rocks just like it in the quiver, don’t worry. And it’s not like you’re gonna find any of those originals for less than like a hundred pounds of flesh and blood, shit. We did hear tell of a couple of reissues just recently—power to you, living in a world of affordable Tronics recs! But enough about Tronics! We’re not talking about them, we’re talking about a sweet and hot mini record of Tronics songs deuced and reduced by the one and the only Sic Alps! Yeah. So here’s a day’s Sic time put in one night, four songs worth—blathered and slaved over, and tinted in the mix for awesome effect. Some beats get softened, some are solidified with march-force pressure, tempos run a bit faster/slower in general…all informed by a fire/passion for the game that those guys and these guys play. Like when the Stones covered Chuck. Love backed by force indeed. “Pangea Globe” it’s called. (STREET DATE - 4/24/2012)

Sic Alps

Napa Asylum

Drag City

***“Napa Asylum is the SIC ALPS in 2010—two and one half years since the fabled release of US E.Z.! Napa Asylum accounts for the swift tilt of time with twenty-two crafted tracks bubbling in the reverb tank. The Alps are in the summer of their years, where they suddenly find a minute to reflect on the breaking down of the years previous. Napa Asylum is overfull with Sic pleasures, echoing half-emptily like they do as the hooks slide into your flesh, animating you marionette-style to tip-tat your way across the dance-floor. Themes from Napa Asylum include re-incarnation, magic and schizophrenia. The process is the flavor—and three albums in, you can still get in on the ground floor, ‘cause Sic Alps always record in the basement. Get down your steps while you can, the songs are as short as they are bitter-sweet. But the one that ends just makes way for the one coming next. No Export To Europe. (STREET DATE - 1/25/2011)

Sic Alps

U.s. Ez

Siltbreeze

U.S. EZ is the fourth long-player in the Sic Alps canon (excluding the recent singles comp CD, A Long Way Around to a Shortcut), and their first for the Siltbreeze label. Fans of last year's amazing Description of the Harbor LP will not be disappointed, especially if they want to hear Side A's cosmic concrete creak, forged with the trebly, high-end neo-glam pop of Side B.   The duo of Mike Donovan and Matt Hartman outdo themselves here and it is the most fully realized Sic Alps release to date. U.S. EZ knows perfectly well what it means to be high and inside. It's not just baseball jargon anymore. If you've been jonesin' for an LP that calls to mind equal parts Bob Markley and Uli Trepte, then look no further, mein dueden (und duedetten). U.S. EZ is the virtual brick of Berlin / Big Sur hash we've all been waiting to break into. The ominous death's head fez has now been ensconced in a witchy naugahyde bonnet, thus levelling the playing field for both the psychedelically challenged and the itinerant avant garde.  Sic Alps have always sprechen zie good vibes and U.S. EZ is a solid thump on all fronts. A summer tour of the States and a European one in the fall are in the works.  "San Francisco's Sic Alps take a modern approach to the psychedelic sound, with reverb remaining a key ingredient, and effects a routine tool, but with a sound more organic...