Sic Alps cover Tronics

San Franciscan garage rock purveyors Sic Alps are set to release an EP of four covers from late 1970s and early 80s London post-punk outfit Tronics. Due out via Drag City on April 21st, the tracks were recorded in one weekend by Sic Alps frontman Mike Donovan and bassist Tim Hellman. I knew nothing about Tronics or the band's founder Ziro Baby before reading about this release, but what I've discovered I've fallen pretty hard for. Below, check out "Shark Fucks," one of the tracks that will be on the Sic Alps' Pangea Globe EP, and "They're Talking About Us"—a song that won't be, but is too awesome not to share.

Buy Tronics' vinyl reissues from What's Your Rupture? and Sic Alps' vinyl from Drag City.

Tronics - "They're Talking About Us" (from Love Backed By Force)

San Francisco Sounds Delicious

For a while now, the music coming out of the Bay Area has been hovering around some level of greatness. Bands like Sonny and The Sunsets, Thee Oh Sees and The Fresh and Onlys—all written about in a recent New York Times article—play music that defies contemporary fads, standards, and to a degree, interference from computers: it's classic in every sense of the word, as if plucked right out of San Francisco during the sweet pop and psychedelic-infested 1960s via some sort of slipstream in the fabric of time. And these bands, along with the Girls and Morning Benders, are just the tip of the city's pop iceberg: groups like The Sandwitches, Bare Wires, The Mantles, and Sic Alps are all producing material of equal quality by the shovelful.

Because it's simply impossible to keep up with every little great band out there, I'm going to do my best to catch both you, my dear reader, and me up on the fabulous sounds reverberating around the various garages and warehouses within the great city by the Bay (and Oakland too).