FMMF: We Talked to Citizen
By Zack Baker, Editorial Director
It’s been a year since Citizen dropped their debut, Youth, and the band has has been quiet since its release. With a dearth of new material since Youth, the recent release of the tour-only single "Silo" came as missive to fans of the band and finally get a peek at what they’ve been up to. On the eve of the band’s first headlining tour and appearance at Columbus' Fashion Meets Music Festival this weekend, ACRN spoke with guitarist Nick Hamm about what's its like to be able to bring your favorite bands on tour, obssessing over Kanye West and what's next for the band.
It's been just over a year since Youth has come out and so much has changed for the band, when we interviewed you last fall you said the biggest difference since the album came out was that being in Citizen felt more comfortable. Now that it's been another few months, what do you think it's like being in Citizen?
Nick Hamm: I feel like a lot has changed even since that time. Even though we haven't put out a new record or anything I feel like a lot has changed. It's still really comfortable, you know what I mean? We can still go play shows and they'll generally be good and we're not as stressed as we used to be.
But I dunno, there's always different issues that come up when you're doing something and always trying to push the boundaries creatively. You always wanna be somewhere that you're not. It's kind of just a matter of making what you want to do happen. That's kind of where we're at right now, we're writing new music and kind of trying to change it up quite a bit, do new things and keep it interesting for people. That's where we're at right now.
It definitely seems like you guys are--I don't want to try to say totally change your vibe but a lot of the art you've put out is very different than the aesthetics of Youth. The "Silo" poster is monochrome, the first tour announcement poster was monochrome and distorted--it's much darker. What's going on in the band and the music that you're working on now that has caused that shift in tone?
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is in terms of the art we're doing now for our headlining tour and stuff like that, it was the kind of thing where I was really, and still am super into this artist Alex Heir. I normally do all the artwork for our stuff but this time I was like, "No, let's reach out and collaborate with people I admire." He was an artist I really liked and so we hit him up and he did the tour artwork and did a great job. I think a lot of people were kinda surprised by what it looked like but he did a great job. So that was really just a matter of me really liking an artist and wanting to work with him and his stuff is generally pretty dark so it worked out like that.
I think that subconciously doing darker things now was a reaction to the whol Youth aesthetic, you know what I mean? The cover is white with flowers! Doing a record cover like "Silo" where it's literally just a Xeroxed picture of our drummer with tiny type above and below it is kind of just the opposite of Youth. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I don't like to blur the lines between different releases and things, you know what I mean? I think it's important for bands to have different eras with their aesthetic, so that was just kind of our way of doing that and we're into the darker tone as of now. I think every release is going to have a different vibe, I don't think this means that every release from here on out is going to be darker. It's just us doing something totally different than Youth.
I appreciate that mentality because I think there are a lot of bands in this scene that are afraid to move away from an aesthetic or style that worked for them previously. I think it's great that you conciously looked at the art surrounding Youth and even though that album obviously did very well, you went in the completely opposite direction.
We built up Youth and the aesthetic--everybody knows flowers, that's the Youth thing. We kinda wanted to tear that down.
You're gearing up your first headlining tour and you're taking out so many great bands: You Blew It!, Hostage Calm, Praise and True Love. Obviously this is an exciting time for you guys, what's the band feeling with the tour coming up so soon?
It's exciting because we've been talking about doing a headlining tour for so long and it just--the time was never right. We would get other tour offers, it was just kind of weighing the options, and finally we settled on it: fall was going to be the perfect time for our headliner. A little late off the record cycle, but it's just something we've always wanted to do and we finally got the chance. We got to hand-pick the bands ourselves and it was really cool. It's just exciting that we can put something together like that. We'll see how it goes, but yeah we're all really excited and it should be a lot of fun. And we got to pick Praise and True Love and hopefully it'll get them a lot of exposure because those are two great bands and they'll be playing to a lot of people. It'll be cool.
There's always a feeling of pride in being able to sort of take bands under their wing and take them out on tour and give them exposure. So what made Citizen choose Praise and True Love to take out on tour?
True Love is a great band from Detroit and we're all just really good friends with them. They're about to put out a new record and we needed a band to do the second half of the tour, so why not take some friends? I also think people will really like them, and it all just kinda worked out perfectly.
Praise was just at the top of my personal want list when we were putting together the tour. We hit them up and they didn't know if they could do it and they were seeing if they could, and it ended up where they could only do half of the tour. But it worked out because that meant that we get to take out True Love too. They're both bands that we just really like. Praise put out what is what I think is one of the best records of this year called Lights Went Out honestly it's really cool that they agreed to come with us even though we're very different bands.
So you're saying that people definitely need to be on time to these shows. Fuck punk time.
Absolutely.
For Citizen specifically, it has been a while since Youth came out and "Silo" was kind of the first new music you've put out in a while. What's the setlist for this tour looking like? Is it gonna be a lot of Youth, some other new material or just "Tracking Time" over and over for 90 minutes?
We're just gonna play "Tracking Time" over and over. [laughs]
OK that's what I thought. That seemed like the most logical choice.
Well that's what we've been doing for the past few years, so we just decided to keep on that track. [laughs]
Uh, it's gonna be sick. We're doing songs off of Youth that we've never played before, we've kind of been playing a pretty similar set for the last year just because we don't have a lot of songs and even less that we wanna play. But yeah there's a few songs off of Youth that we've never played before that we're gonna try out on the tour and we're gonna be playing "Silo" and we're probably... I don't know if we are or not but we're probably going to be playing "Cicuta" which was a song for Will Yip's compilation [Off The Board : A Studio 4 Family] so it should be a good mix. We're gonna be playing some stuff off of Young States, it'll be cool. It's gonna be a good set for anyone who's kinda paid attention to Citizen over the past few years. I'm excited, it'll be our last tour off of Youth so it'll be cool to go out like that and play a lot of songs that people won't be able to hear on any tour after this.
You're playing Fashion Meets Music Festival in Columbus, and it's your first big show in the US since spring. Are you treating it like a trial run for what you're gonna be doing on tour this fall, or how are you approaching it?
The only thing we've done this summer was the UK tour, and that was awesome but those were tiny rooms. So like you said, this is going to be the first time playing to a bigger crowd all summer. We're kinda looking at it as a trial thing because first off, playing fest you just never know how it's going to go. You never know how your set's gonna be because it's so different than playing a club or something. We're gonna play some of the songs that we're doing on our headlining tour, it'll be a shorter set than our headlining tour but kind of a similar feel. We're gonna try shit out and make sure it's alright. If it's not we're probably gonna have to get rid of that. [laughs]
You're also playing the Property Of Zack afterparty show with Ceremony, Vis a Vis and Head North. Is there anyone on that bill that you're particularly excited to play with or see?
YES. I'm so excited to see Ceremony, they're a band that I didn't think we would ever be playing with. I've actually never evn seen Ceremony which is crazy because everyone I know has seen Ceremony like six times. A few years back when they dropped Rohnert Park I just loved that record. It's gonna be such a cool show.
I saw the festival shirts that you guys are doing for Riot Fest and FMMF, what made you guys want to do special shirts for the festivals rather than just sell the normal merch?
I have this obssession with collecting things. It's actually really bad because my bank account fucking hates me. I just love the idea of limited shit and collecting it, so I was just kind of like, "Let's give the people who are coming something special." When I go to a show, that's what I love to see. A lot of the clothes that I buy are based on the fact that it's limited or something, it's cool to be able to say that not a lot of other people have this and the ones that do were at the show with me. I just think that's really cool, and we've also just never done a pocket tee before and I really wanted to make a pocket tee. [laughs]
You mentioned you're super into collecting shit, are there any weird collections that you have that you're not too embarrassed to talk about?
It's kind of weird, I think a lot of people wouldn't be as into as I am, but I'm a huge Kanye West fan. I have a collection of Kanye shit. When he did his last record he did the Yeezus Tour and I thought all the merch from it was awesome. He did these pop-up stores in major cities and some of the stuff that they sold was only available at the pop-ups, so I actually just got a shirt that only 80 were printed of. I have a bunch of other Yeezus Tour collectible shit but probably the coolest thing--of my Kanye collection--is when he released his record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy he did a short film for the song "Runaway" and they did 100 or 150 of these movie posters for the film and they're huge and he signed all of them. I just got my hands on one of those, so that's pretty cool. That's my biggest collection, but I collect Swatches and have a pretty good vintage Green Day shirt collection and have a pretty modest but cool Polo collection. It's not good for my wallet, but it's fun.
So is that limited edition, collector mentality what made you do those super-limited "Silo" flexi-discs for the LA, New York and Boston shows?
Yeah, definitely. We've never done a flexi and I've always wanted to so--Our manager was actually talking to me and was like, "You're only doing 500 seven-inches and more people than 500 want the single." She didn't really get it and wanted us to do more so more people could get their hands on it. But that's not the point, she wasn't really getting why we wanted it to be limited. If something's limited, you really have to try and get it if you want it.
So the compromise was to do 300 flexis with just the electric version of the song and just give it to the major cities and she's excited about that. She's excited about the LA show, she's hoping people will line up so they can get the flexis and she thinks that's badass. So it's kind of a compromise but it's also a way for us to do a flexi and do even more limited shit.
So the compromise for the seven-inch being too limited was to make something even more limited?
[laughs] Exactly, something extremely limited, way more limited.
I just wanted to make sure I had that right. You put out "Silo" and obviously people are psyched on it, is that song representative of the stuff you've been working on or is it a single because even the sound is kind of a one-off?
I wouldn't say that it's representative of the new stuff. When you go into the studio writing one song, it's totally different than going in to write a whole record and having these dynamics. "Silo" is just a good chance for us to be like, "We haven't done something this dark, and we haven't done something as layered and fuzzy as the end of the song. So let's do this and flex this musical muscles we haven't before." And for the LP, there are things that we want to experiment with but we can spread it out over 11 or 10 or 12 songs or whatever. I wouldn't say it's representative at all but it was kind of a fun thing for us to do.
Once the dust has settled from this world-conquering tour, what's next? Are you heading into the studio really hardcore?
We're doing the tour and then we're gonna take some much need time off. We're gonna disappear for a while. We're gonna keep writing the record and go into the studio, but we'll be gone. We're gonna disappear and then reemerge with a new record next year.
What's gonna be on heavy rotation on the tour bus?
I actually just made a playlist, and I've been thinking about what it needs. I've been on a really big Pusha T kick so his last record, My Name Is My Name, has been in pretty heavy rotation. I've been really, really into the latest War On Drugs record so I feel like those are my two right now. Me, Eric [Hamm, bassist and Nick's brother] and Ryland [Oehlers, guitarist] have been really into "Blue Suede" by Vince Staples. We've been playing that song constantly, playing it way too much.
