Premier Guitar | 1 month ago
“Citizen is expertly trained in disappointing our fans,” cheekily admits guitarist Nick Hamm. “So, every time people like something we’re heading in a different direction.”
The self-deprecation aside, Citizen has thrived at throwing musical curveballs. 2013’s debut Youth seemingly shotput them into a trajectory as angsty emo kids with a love of ’90s grunge-rock dynamics. However, 2015’s Everyone Is Going to Heaven expands on their early complexities. They stretch out the symbiotic flow from heavy to quiet. The crushers (“Cement”) hit harder while the dreamers (“Heaviside” or “Yellow Love”) float longer in a spacy nighttime silhouette. 2017’s As You Please further combines atmosphere with aggression. The result is a dark-pop album with cutting, jagged moments of emotion. Synth layers smooth out the edges and enable the hooks and melodies to sink deeper. And the brand-new Life In Your Glass World is almost a more dense, groovy dance record than pure, riff-heavy rock album. (Which makes sense after learning in the Rundown all the songs were written around the rhythm section, not guitar or vocals.)
Just before putting out their latest album, core Citizen members Mat Kerekes (singer), Nick Hamm (guitarist), and brother Eric Hamm (bassist), virtually welcomed PG’s Perry Bean into Kerekes’ home studio that facilitated the new album.
In this episode, the Hamm brothers and singer/producer Mat Kerekes detail the impact their altered songwriting and recording processes impacted the outcome of Life In Your Glass World. In addition, Nick Hamm contextualizes two pivotal EHX pedals, while Eric Hamm explains how losing a Fender Bassman 800 improved his tone.
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