Sicbay: Suspicious Icons

It’s been two years since Sicbay’s last release, and one has to wonder exactly what happened in that time period that would result in such a mellowing out of their sound. Forget about the Nick Sakes of Dazzling Killmen, much less Colossamite, this is a new, calmer animal.

Once you get past that (and it isn’t hard), you see that Sicbay is more interested in creating interesting, melodically-driven music as opposed to, well, noise.

Luckily, the interesting rhythmic elements haven’t been completely abandoned, and what you have is a band that could probably fit nicely onto SST’s roster from the 1980s, straddling genres left and right, but still able to pull it all together with a catchy melody to boot.

There are little hints of Guided by Voices, Avail, Lungfish, and The Minutemen throughout, but Sicbay are on their way to becoming their own touchstone. On the more up-tempo numbers, the band shines the most with interesting harmonic interplay and more confrontational vocals, and these cuts make the album the most worthwhile.

While Suspicious Icons at times seems a little too disjointed, they certainly have their own sound, and fans of all things described as “pop” as long as it has a noun in front of it might want to be the first to take notice, math-rockers second.

Tom Youth
Sicbay (54 40′ or Fight)