Song Of The Day 9/4/2014: Epicycle - "Residential Area"

Untitled Punk Week: Epicycle was from Chicago's North Shore and enjoyed a fairly impressive spike in popularity in the greater Chicago metropolitan area during their requisite few years of existence. Being neither British, unskilled nor hung with a drive-by wardrobe, they escaped their time in the solar flares without much notice. But a few years ago there was reportedly a resurgence of interest in them, enough to warrant a reissue package, and exactly one (1) article in Winnetka Talk, a Chicago Sun-Times publication concerned with the exploits of the 14th richest zip code in the U.S. Since I know you're gonna bring it up, here's former Epicyclist Ellis Clark on whether they're punk or not:

It didn’t take much to get branded punk back in the late-’70s in Chicago. If you had short hair, didn’t have a beard and wore a skinny tie you were punk. I’d say we were power-pop, sometimes punk, but most people just branded us punk. It was easier to get gigs in the city rather than the suburbs but we didn’t mind because that’s were we wanted to be. The suburbs wanted cover bands … still do... I think we wanted to be a blend of Beatles meets punk meets The Monkees/Kinks meets The Jam! I know we were very into the mid-’60s British invasion look and sound but fusing that with the late-’70s pop/punk thing that was going around at the time.

Given their well-appointed upbringings it's hard to tell whether they're serious about defiantly wanting a quiet, normal family existence in "Residential Area" ("Sunday barbecue!"), but either way the song's charming my scales off. Go New Trier Trevians!

('Cause New Trier's a high school in Winnetka. And their mascot is the Trevian. I looked that up. Did I ever look that up.)