Citizens! have fans in all the right places, and on listen, one can say it’s deserved. Alex Kapranos reared his blowhole to volunteer his indie credentials as their producer. Then Kitsuné Records found time aside from assembling hit and miss compilations, to sign their annual guitar band. Good things come in threes, and their fan club reached musketeer proportions when über-vogue L.A. art mongers, Hi-5 Collective offered their visual services.
Their infectious brand of pop music smacks of utter innocence. The most pretentious of critic would find it immeasurably hard to pick faults at their charming, equivocal lyricisms and their melodies: like a shepherd’s crook, each more hooking than the next.
We cornered lead singer, Tom, for an insight into what it takes to be a Citizen…
How did you guys meet as a band?
Me, Lawrence and Mike met at a house party. And we met the other two guys Martin and Tom more recently. That was the night the idea for the band formed.
How does the notion of starting a band come up at a house party?
Sometimes at a party there’s a few guys that are hogging the hi-fi and putting on all the tunes. It was us that night. We had a lot of similar tastes, and all really varied. From classics to current. That’s what brought us together quite well. The open mindedness. There was this tune that Mike played called ‘Mari’ by Martin Rev. It became a bible song for us when we started. Lawrence was putting on some Kanye West too, and I thought “these guys are all right”.
So the band became formed, but what made you name yourselves Citizens?
We named it last summer. There were particular words people were using a lot in the news, and we kept seeing “citizens” everywhere. Obviously, it’s a very common word. And people were starting to talk about each other in that way. It was a way of referring to one another, but in a very political way. We felt something really massive happened last summer and we just wanted to reflect that somehow in the name we chose.
You’re working with Alex Kapranos on your debut album. How did this come about?
He heard some of our demos initially. Through a friend of a friend of a friend. He said to his mate that he liked us and we ended up meeting him for drinks. We just wanted a chat and some advice. We got on really well. We’d been speaking to loads of other producers too. They all had very cynical ideas of where the band had to go, and how we should jump through the hoops of the music industry. They had this ideal of letting go of your integrity before we’d even got started. Alex was the complete opposite. He just wanted us to record it as we wanted it. It just came across that it would be way more fun to do it with him.
Did he ever give you frontman advice? Where to put your feet and how to swing a mic full circle?
We might have talked about it. I really couldn’t say.
You’ve now signed to Kitsuné Records. How did this come about?
Kitsuné were one of the first labels to show an interest. The more we talked to other labels, we realised they were the only ones willing for us to do it on our own terms. Other labels brought this idea of how they could mould us, but Kitsuné were happy for us to do our own thing.
That’s a similar answer to how you met Alex. Did you feel a manufacturing nature in the music industry when you first started talking to producers and labels?
I don’t know. I can only speak for ourselves. We just want to do it on our terms. That’s more fun for us. I can’t speak for other people.
I know you have a tendency to avoid naming influences for fear of being forever tagged with them, but there must be a few?
We don’t like the idea of revivalist stuff. Just picking one moment that’s happened in musical history and bringing it back to life. We don’t want to be a late 70s, 80s or early 90s bands. They’ve already happened. But everyone is essentially retro. We have a ton of influences from various periods of time. For us, it’s about mixing up sounds that we haven’t heard mixed before, and trying to make something that sounds fresh to our ears at least. I’m not sure we can make something completely new, but we’ll try.
The video that accompanied your lead single, True Romance was then re-made by L.A. visual wizards, Hi-5 Collective, who have worked with Odd Future and many more. How did they get in touch?
They were somehow in touch with Kitsuné. They hadn’t done much for anyone in England or Europe before. We’d seen them working with Odd Future and Frank Ocean, so we thought that was pretty cool. It was interesting working with them. They just brought us a solid idea and asked what we thought. We said “yea it sounds bizarre, but go for it”.
It was indeed bizarre. The video takes on the tones of a truly disturbing horror. Human puppetry and the like. Did you ever see the dark potential to this song when you wrote it?
No not at all. When I first read the idea I thought it was crazy. I never saw that side to the song at all. Not that type of violent darkness anyway. I felt it was more desolate. But I love that sort of thing; new people bringing new viewpoints to something.
What can we expect from Citizens debut?
We’re really excited about it. There’s a lot of variation within a strict set of rules. We wrote rules on the wall in the studio. We wanted no individual elements of any song to sound similar genre. If the drums sounded dry, like a Bowie track, nothing else was allowed to sound like that. If the piano sounded hip-hop, no other instrument was allowed to sound remotely hip-hop. There’s a lot of party songs on there, and a few atmospheric tracks. There was a couple different people writing the songs each time too, so a few different characters come through. It’ll be out in May.
