Citizen
9th February 2024

Citizen have always eluded definition. The Toledo, Ohio-based five-piece have been making dynamic, wide-ranging guitar music for over ten years, challenging expectations with each new album and refusing to fit neatly in a box.

“On Calling The Dogs (the band’s 5th record) it truly is the most excited and energized the band has been in a really long time,” guitarist Nick Hamm says. “This album makes me feel like I’m 19 again — it’s like therapy or something. It sent a lightning bolt through everybody that worked on it. We’re ready to go.”

Across 11 tracks, Calling The Dogs explores a range of moods, styles and themes with each song as memorable as the last. The album’s first single, “If You’re Lonely,” is the kind of upbeat singalong anthem fans should expect to belt out at shows for years to come. Tracks like “Hyper Trophy” and “Can’t Take It Slow” show that Citizen can still put out unforgettable melodies over dance-worthy rhythms, while others (like “When I Let You Down”) lean more into timeless classics bordering on garage rock. As a whole, it’s as intense and energetic of an experience as the band has ever released.

“I really wanted to hone in on how it would feel to play the songs live while writing Calling The Dogs,” Kerekes says. “The songs on the last record are so much fun to play live, I wanted to make sure that this one would still invoke the same kind of emotion and crowd reaction. I kept asking myself ‘Will this be exciting to see live? How will the energy be?’ more than I ever have before.”

With all that said, the album is one of self reflection, as well as one that exercises personal demons for the members. The band’s overall willingness to confront themes that they’ve alluded to on past records – combating self-doubt, surviving and escaping familial toxicity, the development of self-awareness, and personal healing is one of the factors that makes Calling The Dogs their most poignant and cohesive body of work yet.