Concert Fri Jul 11 2008

Killing Me Quickly (with their song)

By Chris Sienko

Sic Alps killed me in just over 90 seconds - it didn't take much time at all. The 1:30 slice of perfection in question is "Bells (with Tremolo and Distortion)," off of their recent Description of the Harbor 12-inch (don't bother looking, it's long gone, unless you've got $75 and an Ebay username to spare) and it just nailed me - it's like a breath of air straight out of Lenny Kaye's record cellar, a lost psychedelic Nugget(s) lifted from obscurity, dusted off, and then killed and reborn anew, because it's not a cover, it's a new song with moves for moderns. The main lyric is pretty much one line: "I don't care 'bout what you say/meet me down on the lawn, lawn lawn," and that might not even be how it goes! The singer drawls the last word so exquisitely, it's hard to tell. Or care. (Youtube video here…count the visual music references/influences!)

This obsession wasn't unexpected, though. The band already had their sights leveled on my temple with 2006's Teenage Alps cassette single on Animal Disguise. 10 minutes in a heaven that was equal parts dirgey psych-rock, Sabbath swagger, and black metal shred, with a few gently sprinkled piano tinkles at the end for good measure. That tape is long gone as well, but all of these heart-stoppers and more can be found on a recent 26-track odds-n-sods collection titled A Long Way Around to a Shortcut, also on Animal Disguise. The CD collects all the music from two 12-inches, two 7-inches, the aforementioned cassette, a compilation track, and an unreleased track. To use the verbiage of late-night TV, if you wanted to buy all these songs separately, you'd expect to pay $175 (thanks to fan "enthusiasm" on Ebay). Instead, you get a concise 60 minute program which travels backwards in time (starting material from November 2007 and working backwards to April 2006) from sunshiny '60s garage-psych into darker, more ramshackle alleys. The "Strawberry Guillotine" 7-inch, for example, betrays the bands roots among the Load Records shamble-rock shamen - think USA Is A Monster, Friends Forever, or Astoveboat, all distortion-y and cavern-y. Thing is, even their noisiest "experiment" tracks still sounds like the kind of sonic “Happenings” you might spy on the back-end of an early Red Crayola album. Similarly, their most unapologetically retro-sounding pieces still never travel into mimicry. The old sounds new, the new sounds old. Just like the Albert Ayler, whose style was always based in R&B and the blues, even while speeding into the future of jazz, Sic Alps create something that feels old, but keeps pushing the whole machine forward.

Sic Alps will be playing this Saturday at Enemy (1550 N. Milwaukee Ave, 3rd Floor) along with Wet Hair, Magic Missile, and Druids of Huge. Doors at 8 p.m., Start time 8:30 sharp due to volume laws. $5 suggested donation. The band will no doubt have copies of Long Way Around to a Shortcut for sale, as well as their forthcoming record on Siltbreeze, titled U.S. EZ, due for national release on Friday, July 15.