Citizen Return with Halcyon Blues
- ethanjcooke1
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
Citizen are back. Tell your mum, tell your cousin, tell your dog. Halcyon Blues has finally dropped.
Three years on from their last album, Calling the Dogs, Citizen are letting everyone know they aren't slowing down. Album six comes off the back of celebrating ten years of Everybody is Going to Heaven in 2025. Since breaking onto the scene with debut album Youth in 2013, Citizen have only pushed themselves from strength to strength. Youth is one of those albums, it came out at the perfect time for the ride of emo music in the 2010’s. There are still tumblr blogs posting lyrics from this album on a daily basis. I still remember the day when I first heard The Night I Drove Alone and even though the song came out thirteen years ago, it still absolutely slams my soul when I hear it now.
Citizen first announced the album back in April alongside lead single Highs and Lows. Two more singles, title track Halcyon Blues and I Can See You From Here, followed in subsequent months. Good Fortune was the last single released before the album drop.
This is one of my most anticipated albums of 2026. I’ll tell you now, the hype is real. There’s nothing worse than looking forward to an album release and then it falls flat. This is not one of those instances. Halcyon Blues delivers. Every track.
Opening tracks are important. Setting the scene and establishing the tone, Good Fortune, wastes no time in letting you know that Citizen mean business. Ripping in with a sick drum line, the intro had me up and ready to go. The chorus ‘You’re no good for me, you’re no good for me, and I’m no good for you. You’re no use to me, I’m no use to you, is that good fortune?’ is delivered in a way that just hits. That implication of a breaking down relationship and recognising it in time is very fortunate. Upbeat emo music is usually a bit of a misnomer but Citizen have spent years perfecting this style. The drums are doing so much in this track, drummer Ben Russin has had a generational day out when writing the drum line in this track.
Next up we come to the penultimate single released pre-album drop, I Can See You From Here. It comes in gently and the first lyrics being ‘wake up if you’re dreaming’ just would suit being an opener so well. The gentle build-up of the first verse before everything comes in a bit harder does make you feel like you’re waking from a dream. The mix of shoegaze, soft grunge, and post-hardcore is just such a comforting feeling. This track has the feeling of a band really working on everything that they’ve learned and done throughout their careers. The exit bridge after the second chorus has that floating feeling of weightlessness.
Track three was the second single released, and album title track Halcyon Blues. This track has that shoegaze float to it. The track is quite light and has a dreamy feel to it from all aspects. The weight and emotion comes from the lyrics of this song. With the chorus ‘I wasn’t meant to love you, why would I choose to be such a fool? Bittersweet like summer rain coming down hard on you, Halcyon blues’ invoking that pain of watching a relationship dissolve as you grow apart. It is just so perfectly emo and that’s something I’ve always loved about Citizen’s lyrical content.
Up next, Is It In My Brain. This one is one of my favourites on the album. The shoegaze is still in the guitar sound on this track, but the pace and punch are back. The vocal delivery just hits so right on this track. The way Mat Kerekes delivers his lyrics has always been distinctive, and this track has a great mix of his singing voice and his staccato shouting. Musically there’s some really satisfying moments in this track. About a minute and a half in, there’s an instrumental break before the chorus and the drums kick back in jumping from ear to ear on my headphones, it just hits different.
Always the Last One to Leave is a slow melodic piano driven track in the guts of the album. The instrumentals on this track are phenomenal and build a real sense of space in between verses. Things are really simple during the verses, to shine the light on the lyricism, but the contrast to the complexity and magnitude of the instrumentals is just beautiful. There’s something to be said about moments of silence in songs, and this is a good one. Theres a pause as the delivery of the line ‘always the last one to leave’ hangs on a moment of silence before the strings return for the outro and it reestablishes that multilayered instrumental that makes this track so good.
Marking the mid-point of the album, Either Way comes in with a simple guitar line to establish the track before the rest of the band come in. This track has the soft-grunge style that gives those comparisons to one of the band’s influences Title Fight. The hook of ‘How many times do we have to hurt before we get it right?’ and the breaking down to just ‘do we have to be hurt’ are the main focus of the track, which builds on the lyrical theme throughout the album.
A lot of bands try to do anything they can to be the hottest thing of the moment and we’ve just never operated like that.... I see Citizen as this long term creative project where there’s always somewhere new to go, and that’s kept me exhilarated through all these years. And we’ve trusted that people who like our band will want to come along. A lot of people grew with us and we’re really thankful for that.- Nick Hamm
The intro bassline of Matador is a real tease. It sets up a ripper of a track before breaking off for the first verse to be vocals and an acoustic guitar as focus. However, the contrast then to the rest of the track works so well. Jumping off into the chorus, the bass line comes back and Mat’s staccato delivery punches its way into your head. The juxtaposition between verses and choruses on this track may just give you whiplash in the best way. I can only imagine if this song makes the live set, the choruses will get everyone going and the verses will give everyone the chance to catch their breath. This track has a similar energy to Death Dance Approximately. but the distance in energy between verse and chorus is much larger.
A return to a soft grunge sound with Ether. The intertwining guitar sounds have the real impact on this track, the atmosphere that Nick Hamm and Mason Mercer build throughout are just so beautifully heartwrenching. There’s a real gut punch in this song with every member of the band out to upset me and I don’t know why. The heavily toned guitar solo outro on this track is going to haunt my dreams. This song is
emo as fuck, and I love every second of it.
The bass intro isn’t fucking around on Smooth Talker. Bassist Eric Hamm is putting work in on this track. From the intro right the way through the driving force of this track is the bass. It’s not something we’ve truly seen on this album, we have seen it in the past from Citizen, so it is great to hear the band lean on the bass here. There’s real punch in the chorus line ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard but its none of your concern’ and that anger and frustration really seeps into the delivery.
At long last, we get to the single that came with the album announcement Highs and Lows. I know I said Is It In My Brain was one of my favourites, but this one is my out and out favourite. Mat’s iconic staccato delivery is just absolutely on point. Scream this one at the top of your lungs in your car with the windows down no matter the weather. This style of vocal delivery has been consistent through the band’s discography, However, you can’t help drawing comparisons to Turnstile’s last two albums. who started and popularised this style is a discussion for another time. The layering of vocals and harmonies is just fucking top tier on this track. It’s in my top 5 Citizen tracks of all time. Ask me about that another day.
Album closer, Anne, has a different feel to the rest of the album. A slow build through the first verse, just vocal and acoustic guitar growing into something bigger gradually. There is an intricacy in this track. The drums really make you pay attention to what Ben Russin is doing. The small breaks and the fuzzy guitar solo from Nick Hamm. The closing lines of the album ‘I look through you and I don’t recognise a thing, it is not your style, it’s not who you’re meant to be’ are left to linger with us as the song buzzes out for us to sit in the discomfort.
I love this album. Bands often declare their latest work their best work, this is one of the rare instances that I actually agree. Citizen have clearly spent time drawing upon every piece of knowledge that they’ve gained from the last seventeen years. The album has elements that reflect every era of their work, and I am here for it. The album shows growth and maturity from the band, and I feel it in my knees and lower back. This could be up there with one of my top albums of 2026. A very early shout, possibly too early, but if I get proven wrong, I’ll be elated.
Who knew the buffest man in alternative music could continue to be so emo. Lyrically, the album bases itself in the multiple stages of breakdown that happen in relationships, while not groundbreaking subject material, this delivery and perspective doesn’t have the feeling of things that have been said thousands of times before.
Citizen are about to undertake a North American and limited European tour to close out 2026. The band will be undertaking a nationwide Australian tour in February/March of 2027 alongside Drug Church; these shows are going to be a real treat and not worth missing. Tickets are available through Destroy all Lines.
seriously, tell your mum about this album.
Halcyon blues is available now via Run for Cover and Civilians.
