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Sic Alps, "Pleasures and Treasures"
This set of superficially disassembled songs has its roots solidly planted in structured rock genres, but the production lifts it into a gorgeous leftfield. The fake brown paper bag artwork and the abandoned camper van on the cover give the album a discarded look, which is partially true. This lost 2005 debut from San Francisco's Sic Alps (in their trio incarnation) has been thankfully pulled from limbo and abandoned in plain view for the world’s listening pleasure.
Swimming through thick and thin psychedelic atmospheres, these songs come to the fore of the record like rediscovered field hollers and wan white-boy blues. The majority of these twelve tracks come in too short, eagerly grabbing attention and then leaving too soon. These cooling furnace blasts of fuzzed distant verse and chorus music are buried way back in spluttering drums and wrenched warped guitar. Rooted in simple song configurations, the production keeps the bare bones afloat in wobbling hissy waves and scalped psychedelic guitar drones.
The opening "Battle of Breton Woods" is a cavernous Jandekian sounding minute long intro, bashed and trashed guitar leaking all over the place. Some of the music here skims the looser edges of NY noise rock, the best example of which is "Surgeon and the Slave" with its paint-flaying notes and mumbled vocals. The wind tunnel vocals of "Reconnection Land"s lethargic stomp open up the higher frequency channels for some Mary Chain buzz-pop white-out. There’s evidence of a lighter touch too in songs like "I Know Where Madness Goes", the fumblingly distant acoustic guitar and abandoned vocals summoning up broken hearts and strings. The simplicity of the vocal and piano (and hiss) cut "I am Grass" opens up a path for Sic Alps to sign up for some weird folk action in the future.
Not being aware of where they are now, this is a good place for a beginner like me to jump aboard the Sic Alps train. Time to hunt down the rest.
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