BIOGRAPHY: Sentimental admirers of blustery fall weather, base- ment shows, and late night Denny’s, Street Smart Cyclist are a 6- piece band from Bethlehem, a sleepy town in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley north of Philadelphia. Bethlehem has produced many notable artists such as Pearls and Brass, Ultimate Warriors, Weston, Carpen- ter Ant, Pissed Jeans, and Gatecrashers, primarily hardcore and grindcore bands, which the members of SSC enjoy and admire. Indeed, most of SSC have played in hardcore, screamo, and noise bands themselves.

The Cyclist began as more of a side project of longtime friends previously in local bands Audio Recording Club, Harrison Bergeron, Storm the Bastille, and the Rocket Arcadia. They came together out of a common and principled affection for each other’s bands, beards, flannel, and raucous music that simultaneously combines emotional honesty, progressive (read: quirky and at times awkward) composi- tion, and a heavily melodic core. It has slowly become their main priority as they discovered how much more fun it is to bring the energy, emotion, and all out ruckus of louder, more dissonant styles of punk music to a style that is brighter, more optimistic, and all-around fun.

Emo, in its change (mostly in nomenclature, through a series of mischaracterizations) from a gloomy, spastic afterthought of hardcore punk, to a more accessible pop-ified sub-sect of indie rock, paused momen- tarily in a really satisfying place with bands like Cap'n Jazz, Christie Front Drive, Mineral, and Boys Life. This band cannot shake off accusations of heavily drawing from this period of pop Renaissance where the afore- mentioned energy and drive of hardcore intersected optimally with the progressive and aesthetically bright and beautiful properties of indie rock and pop.

The band’s members tip their hats to many of their favorite genres, haphazardly, yet tastefully, synthe- sizing elements of early emo/screamo ala Indian Summer and Moss Icon, the twinkly mid-western emo of American Football and Ghosts and Vodka, and melodic hardcore in the vein of Dillinger Four and Funeral Oration to create an infectious mess that transitions seamlessly from calculated algebra-inspired grooves to joyous chaos held together by massive group sing-alongs.