Citizen Cleans Sound with As You Please
Citizen has traveled through every realm of punk through their eight-year career. Starting as a pop-punk to post-hardcore band, Citizen released Young States in 2011 on the then under the radar Run For Cover Records. With every release since Young States, the band has changed their sound to another aspect of punk. 2013’s Youth, maybe the group’s most widespread and accepted album, reorganized their pop-punk sound and took aspects of emo with the help of the somber, yet intimidating vocals of Mat Kerekes. When that wasn’t enough, the midwestern crew released Everybody Is Going To Heaven, an album that can be regarded almost as a grunge revival, a movement that was unofficially led by groups like Superheaven, Title Fight and of course Citizen.
The most recent Citizen album, entitled As You Please, once again takes a sharp turn in a different direction, while maintaining the heart and soul of Citizen that fans have connected with for the past eight years. “Jet,” the first single from the album, is a track that slightly tracks back to the emo stage of Youth, with a more sleek style of production. The dueling guitar pieces with Kerekes’ signature shout fit perfectly as an opener. “In The MIddle Of It All” might be one of the most strange tracks Citizen has ever written. It begins with the shouting of the song’s title in the form of harmonies that can only really be described as nuns of the Catholic Church. Although at first listen, the track gives off the vibe that this would get old, but the deeper into the song the listener goes, the more it fits into less of a disturbance, but a strange mystical and spooky aesthetic. The track does end abruptly though, as it feels like the CD is skipping when in reality that was the production characteristic they chose.
“As You Please” sounds slightly similar to the old Citizen track, “How Does It Feel?” but with more rawness in the instruments. The bare bass that follows the verse continues the ominous features of the album that are developed by “In The Middle Of It All.” “Fever Days,” another single from As You Please also includes the sole bass over vocals at the songs beginning. When the guitars come in though, it brings about the signature shouting vocals from Kerekes about poisonous relationships, that is a theme of many of the tracks on this record. He shouts “I can feel you breathing into me / Our existence separates / I can feel you now, near and hollowed out / Our existence separates.”
The production has certainly been heavily financed on this record, at least more so than previous Citizen records, and although the cleaner version of Citizen is welcomed on tracks like “Jet” that open As You Please, the album does begin to blend in on certain songs, but the songs that are so out there such as “As You Please” and “In The Middle of It All” keep the listener on their toes enough to accept As You Please a welcomed piece to the band’s discography.
Leave a Comment