Sic Alps – US EZ (Stiltbreeze)

The fourth outing in as many years San Francisco kraut-surfers Mike Donovan and Matt Hartman, aka Sic Alps, is a curiously partial realisation of an album. Sparse to the point of skeletal, tracks rarely reach the three minute mark, choosing or rather being chosen to die young, cut off in their prime. It’s a very uneasy feeling, which deserves some elucidation.

Imagine please an empty beach in Germany where the breakers roll in and are seen only by the ghosts of two young American musicians, trying to piece together a song that will end their purgatory de la plage, breaking off and starting again like a melodic Waiting For Godot. Forgive my pretentiousness, but I’m on a pistachio high. ‘US EZ’ is not easy listening. Opener ‘Massive Place’ peels the skin on a raw wound of paranoid psychedelia and post-war german rock and roll, all bound together with Big Sur reverb. No drums, just melody and echo that fades restarts with more Pink Floyd, less Beach Boys and screaming analog ghosts (‘Bric Jaz’). This theme repeats throughout, with the occasional sound experiment and angry musical outburst (‘Put The Puss To Bed’ is like an abbreviated ‘Ummagumma’ and ‘N##JJ’ is pure violent shred-noise). It almost seems too futile for words.

There are fortunately moments of possible reconciliation. ‘Everywhere and There,’ fully conceived and breathily delivered with pupil dilating languish ties together the Byrds, Floyd and Velvet underground with some lovely psychedelic harmonies, only to have the bubble burst by discordant and heavy guitars. ‘Clubbing for $$’ with its psycho chillout blues is a dead cert for Spaceman 3/Spiritualised’s chemical gospel, only it’s a chorus to an absent hollow god. Even ‘Quai Des Orfevres’ with its tenderness and softness, alien amidst this soundscape of antisocial pop and twisted guitars, is the symphony of a heart shattering – regardless of glockenspiels.

Like an outtake taken from the sixties psychedelic movement, ‘US EZ’ is an oddity; a lost tape; a rumour. It’s songs drift in and out, the voice fragile and uncertain, the guitars lazily or angrily abused for no good reason. Sad and lonely rainy day music, it’s hard to adore something so impossible to cling to, and I must admit I find myself craving a fully formed song by the end, but this is as good an album as you could want for this wet, autumnal summer we are having and will be ideal for the forlorn wintry autumn we experience as a result.