CITIZEN's musical journey is a mesmerising evolution, continuously pushing the boundaries of emo and pop-punk while radiating indie charm and heartfelt sincerity. With their fifth album, 'Calling The Dogs,' they defy genre boundaries and embrace their youthful wonder for an unapologetically uptempo yet deeply introspective record. Check out our latest Upset cover story.

Words: Steven Loftin.

Shapeshifting with every album, Citizen's search for their final form continues. Existing in the space between emo and pop-punk while dazzling with indie ambitions and heartfelt sentiments, theirs is a place of their own; Citizen have built themselves into something a bit special.

For their fifth outing, they're taking things up a notch. Following on from 2021's 'Life In Your Glass World', 'Calling The Dogs' is a decidedly more uptempo effort without sacrificing their unique blend in the name of forward motion. But that doesn't mean things can't progress.
"At this point in life, I think Citizen has previously been a pretty mid-tempo band," vocalist Mat Kerekes starts. "And while that's still cool – and I still like that – it's just at this point in life, I'm looking for something a little faster and louder, you know?"

Unleashed like a greyhound, 'Calling The Dogs' holds everything close to its heart they've previously built up. It stays loose on its feet, even in the more introspective moments, keeping a heart loyal to its creators. "It didn't feel like we were necessarily building upon what Citizen is, you know, as people perceive Citizen to be. It was just getting back in the garage and writing the songs that, to us, were gonna be fun to play," guitarist Nick Hamm adds. "And so this is the first time to me that I feel like we've expanded upon a sound instead of taking a total turn."

It's the band stripping things back to basics. It plays out with the naive nature of a group in their parents' house while still holding loftily the ambitions they've accrued over six albums of decidedly experimental, chess-moving sounds. Ambitions that playfully marry the fact that Mat and Nick, along with Eric Hamm (bass), have been doing this since 2009. "We actually made a handshake promise we'd never not been a band together when we were very young kids," Mat deadpans. "So we had to keep true to that, even though we hate each other," he breaks laughing. Now, too, joined by Ben Russin (drums) and Mason Mercer (guitar), Citizen are more fortified than ever, and the results speak for themselves. "These were fun to send to each other and expand upon and give opinions on – it really did feel like that young, lost, but eager feeling," Nick explains.

It is this youthful wonder that Citizen are aiming to mine. As Mat mentions, "Music is cool when you don't know anything about what's happening." Rooted in this wonder, it's here that 'Calling The Dogs' finds its joy. "I remember when I used to be young, and I would listen to a song, and I had no idea what was being played or how it was being played," he continues. "Everything was just cool to me, and with each Citizen record, it's kind of like, 'Okay, how can we make this cool again?'"

While no turn of Citizen's has been against their natural grain, as they've grown, the group have needed to expand that wonder into something more complex. Helped in part by their changes in the line-up, more often than not, it was the product of "Showing each other things and being like, 'Oh, I don't know what this you know, we should try to do something in this direction'," according to Mat. Having been guitar-based for as long as they can remember, breaking the monotony was key.

"Instead of picking up a guitar and just playing chords and writing more songs that you think are fun, you're always experimenting. You're like, 'Oh, wow, that sounds really cool, how do I do that? I don't know how to do that. So I've got to figure this out'. And it becomes exciting again, and it's not just boring, 'And here's another song. Here's another song. Here's another song'. It's like, 'Hey, I did this, and this sounds pretty cool!'

For Mat, the lyrical centre point of Citizen records, maturation is equally as key. Confessing that "a lot of earlier Citizen records, the lyrical content is really. point the finger, blame everyone else for everything." These days, he's much more self-aware. "As the years go by, it's a bit more, maybe I could have done this better, and yeah, this hurt my feelings; this affected me in this way? But also, maybe I was part of that and holding yourself accountable for things that you once did. So there's no regret at all. That's just who I was at the time."

It's in these spaces of self-evaluation and emotion that Citizen have built their base. They speak to a truth which, rather than cloying, embraces and channels a way forward. Even in their most sparse moments, they can toy with feelings in a way that will surge you to hope. It's to this respect that Mat confidently admits, "I think we could write any kind of song, whether it be a song like 'Dogs', which is a bit heavier, more mean sounding and then something like 'If You're Lonely', where it's more on the major side of things, and it's just because we wrote it and we're all playing it – it's gonna be cohesive."

But this time around, it's those aggressive feelings that lampoon and run riot. For Mat, it's wanting to channel "stuff that just kind of pumps you up and makes you want to do bad things is cool to me. And so when writing a song that gives you that energy, it's such a specific feeling that you can't get anywhere else." Nick laughs, "I feel like at some point in time, we kind of realised that Citizen could sound tough."

Piecing together 'Calling The Dogs' was a straightforward process, says Mat. "I like to feel like I'm on a roller coaster when I listen to music." Nick adds, "Making an album is like a movie; you can have that final moment that's sad and just leaves you with tears, or you can have that 'you can have that' moment." Their fifth outing opts for the latter. When all the dust begins to settle, things soon spin back up with closer 'Takes One To Know One', a last kick out into the night.

"It's ending in this, for lack of a better term, triumphant way," Nick explains. "We're gonna go out with this statement like, 'This is how we feel'. This album does tell a story of victory in a way because we're down the line so far; we're not gonna go out slow. We're not going to be old beat down men – we're going to be energetic and tell this story the way we want to," he decidedly affirms.

For all that they do, Citizen know there's more road ahead. It's now been a decade under the sun for their heart-on-sleeve rock, and the tarmac isn't ending anytime soon. "I think in that way, we'll never be done. It gives us a mission that we can never complete, to our frustration," Nick smiles. "But also, that's an amazing thing for a band to have, and for us to have that, we're just constantly searching. I don't know if we'll ever find that sound that we hear in our heads or whatever. But every album is trying to get closer to that, you know?" ■