The San Francisco group releases a 12-inch record, Soft Tour in Rough Form, on April 15. Expect jangly guitars, inconclusive tempos and piles of fuzz—in a good way. See, what’s working best for these guys is that under all that experimenting and those jarring sonics, there’s an undeniable pop sensibility.
Founded in 2004, the lineup includes Mike Donovan, who played with the likes of Big Techno Werewolves, Ropers and Sounds of The Barbary Coast, and Matt Hartman, an Albuquerque native known for his work in Henry’s Dress and Cat Power.
There’s something simultaneously old and new about what Sic Alps does, as though the musicians know whose shoulders their genre was built on, but still, they aren’t afraid to add their own innovations to the heap.
Lowlights, a local psych-folk crew and perfect complement to the Alps, will bring its peculiar breed of grace to the evening. One-man California band Phillip Roebuck rounds out the evening. And if the pictures don’t lie, Roebuck is the kind of guy who wears a big drum strapped to his back to create his frantic banjo-enhanced clang.
