Something special must be in the air of San Francisco’s rehearsal rooms for such great garage-rock to keep coming from the former hippie-stronghold. In addition to Ty Segall and his never-tiring creative urge, Sic Alps are stepping up to the limelight. Instead of combining Beatles-singing-melodies with wild guitar-orgies, as Ty Segall does, the foot stays away from the fuzz-pedal over wide time spans and Sic Alps gear their sound much closer to folk melodies and West-Cost-psychedelica of the 1960s when it comes to their use of melodies. Their instrumentation doesn’t only include the standard e-guitars, bass and drums, but also a fairly out-of-tune piano, a country guitar and even some strings. The fact that the ten tracks still don’t sound over-produced or pretentiously rocky has a variety of reasons: First of all, it’s the attitude of their delivery – they play their songs off the cuff, in a nonchalant and relaxed manner. In addition, they have managed to come up with melodies, which don’t automatically trigger the feeling of »been there, done that«. And finally, Sic Alps have produced a record of varieties, of full of uptempo-feelgood-tracks („Moviehead“), heavyhearted ballads (»Rock Races«) and noisy rock-tracks (»Drink Up!«), which all in all still create a coherent album. Even the plangent, atmospheric closer »See You On The Slopes« fits the picture.
Sic Alps
