After only a few releases, San Francisco’s Sic Alps have cultivated a frenzied pack of followers willing to toss out significant dough in order to collect the group's out-of-print records. Label Drag City placated those hysterical souls in 2009 with A Long Way Around to a Shortcut, a collection of the really hard-to-find earlier stuff that was certainly a helpful way to bridge the boring interval since 2008’s U.S. EZ. But Long Way proved only to temporarily sate the bellies aching across the nation as months slowly dissolved into seasons without nary a new track from Sic Alps. One of the more extraordinary lo-fi bands, Sic Alps playfully embrace the residue of garage and surf, and homogenizes it into a honey-sweet mania not unlike drinking too much absinthe and listening to Syd Barrett outtakes underwater.
Sure, in the past year, they've released a few songs on compilations, including an excellent cover of Donovan’s "Superlungs" for their L. Mansion 7” on Slumberland Records. And of course, there was the terrific 12” tour split with Magik Markers. But waiting for their next LP and wondering when it would come to light had become an arduous endeavor and eventually, I was prompted to bother Sic Alps with a phone call.
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2010.