Album Reviews

Whenever a new Citizen album comes out, you never really know what you are going to get. Post-hardcore, indie pop, shoegaze, emo... the Toledo, Ohio-based three-piece - vocalist Mat Kerekes, guitarist Nick Hamm, and bassist Eric Hamm - has already went and explored all of it on their previous outings.So how does ‘Life In Your Glass World’ fit into things?

Well, they start things off with the gloomy dance rock of ‘Death Dance Approximately,’ a bouncy tune that stands in shrill contrast to lines like ‘I don’t wanna go outside today / I don’t wanna talk to anybody / I don’t care to hear about your day.’Equally upbeat is the indie rock romp that is previously released single ‘I Want To Kill You’.And just when you start thinking that there is reason enough here to get carefully excited about the new Citizen album, they throw in duds like ‘Blue Sunday’ and ‘Thin Air,’ both of which sound like the emo version of muzak.

Elsewhere on ‘Life In Your Glass World,’ they come off as Nine Inch Nails lite (‘Fight Beat’) while ‘Winter Buds’ sounds more like Death Cab than even Death Cab has on recent iterations. But then there’s also ‘Black and Red,’ which finds the trio channeling their inner Bloc Party.

So yeah, whenever a new Citizen album comes out, you never really know what you are going to get. On ‘Life In Your Glass World,’ you simply get all of it: the good, the bad and the mildly interesting.

Track listing:

1. Death Dance Approximately
2. I Want To Kill You
3. Blue Sunday
4. Thin Air
5. Call Your Bluff
6. Pedestal
7. Fight Beat
8. Black and Red
9. Glass World
10. Winter Buds
11. Edge of The World