17 years into an impressive career, Citizen still feel like underdogs who have never quite fit in. The band’s persistent sonic evolution and refusal to make the same record twice has earned them a reputation as one of the most consistently captivating bands in modern rock music. But following your own path often means walking it alone, and their unlikely rise from a band of Toledo high schoolers to long-running headliners capable of selling out shows around the world has been hard-earned. It's precisely this commitment to their craft that has led to their new album, Halcyon Blues. It’s a dynamic and confident culmination of all that’s come before, making it crystal clear that for all their sonic restlessness, Citizen have always known exactly who they are. From the start, the band–vocalist Mat Kerekes, guitarist Nick Hamm, bassist Eric Hamm, along with newer members guitarist Mason Mercer and drummer Ben Russin–were steadfastly determined to follow their creativity wherever it led. Over the years they deftly moved through raw emo, menacing post-hardcore, anthemic alternative, garage-y indie pop, and so much more. Now Halcyon Blues brings elements from throughout their entire catalog together into a singular and instantly satisfying record that just sounds like Citizen.  In the band’s earlier years, their sonic shifts were seen as a bug rather than a feature. “We’ve never easily known where we belong,” explains Kerekes. “When we were coming up we’d try to get tours and people would ask verbatim, ‘What kind of band is this?’ We were the ugly ducklings for a long time, and maybe we still are, but I like that we figured out how to stand on our own.” And the band has also stood the test of time. While many of their contemporaries from the 2010s emo boom burned bright but also quickly burned out, Citizen’s singular focus on pushing themselves musically allowed them to grow steadily–and for their audience to grow with them. “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,” says Nick Hamm. “We don't think in moments, or months, or record cycles. Some bands end up getting sick of whatever walls they exist in, but 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.”  Where past Citizen albums have felt like direct responses to the preceding release, Halcyon Blues sounds like the group wrapping their arms around their entire catalog and carrying it forward. Recorded by Kerekes in his home studio in Toledo, then mixed by Tom Lorde-Alge (U2, Weezer, Blink182), the record taps into the urgency and ferocity of Citizen’s early albums while embracing the epic scope and undeniable hooks of their more recent work. “I think the band is always in conversation with itself,” explains Hamm. “Early on we tried to set it up so that Citizen could be whatever we want it to be, so we’ve always been ready and willing for the music to change as we change as people. But at the end of the day we are still the same people making music together, the same people that made Youth and all the rest.”  Being those people hasn’t always been easy, for Kerekes in particular, and Halcyon Blues finds him simultaneously reckoning with personal upheaval while finding a sense of security within the band for the first time. “When you're doing what you always dreamed of doing, you really don't understand why it’s not always fulfilling,” he explains. “There’s been times where I've thought about leaving the band, but the Youth anniversary shows were a real gamechanger for me. I would walk out on stage and look out at the front row and see people’s faces that I recognized because they’ve been coming to Citizen shows for a decade. It made me sort of feel like this is the coolest thing ever. Why would I even for a second not be stoked on it? From that moment on I've just been all in. This is who I am and this is what I do.” Kerekes’ self-assuredness with his role in the band contrasts the uncertainty that permeates Halcyon Blues’ lyrics. “It’s about unexpected change,” he says. “You think you know everything, you think you have everything figured out, and then all of the sudden you don’t. Everything’s different, for better and for worse. Sometimes it’s really hard but ultimately it might be for the best.” The opening salvo of “Good Fortune” and “I Can See You from Here” explode from the speakers, introducing the record’s blend of technicolor sound and melancholic themes. These are huge rock songs with fittingly huge emotions, but the youthful frustration of Citizen’s early work has grown up too, replaced by a more nuanced, though no less cutting, adult perspective. “The album sounds sad but it’s not necessarily like that,” says Kerekes. “Sometimes coming of age things are bittersweet, and this is sort of like that too.” Mid-album standout “Always The Last One To Leave” offers one of the most sweeping ballads Citizen have ever penned, while scorching tracks like “Matador” or “Smooth Talker” tap into pent up resentment with cathartic results. “Highs and Lows” pushes the band’s sound to truly astounding heights, a soaring alternative song driven by propulsive drums, a towering chorus melody, and synth strings that draw the listener into Kerekes’ emotionally raw storytelling.  As the cinematic “Anne” closes out Halcyon Blues, it’s clear that Citizen have truly arrived. “I never imagined we’d play shows to several hundred people, let alone thousands,” says Hamm. “We never had that red-hot rocketship thing, but we always did what we wanted to do and we had a feeling that if we kept doing it, then eventually everything else would come together. Maybe we’ve started to come to that point.” This is the sound of nearly two decades of musical and personal experience combined into a declaration of something their dedicated fans already know: Citizen is one of our great modern rock bands–and they’re at the absolute top of their game.

Hotline TNT is a NYC-based shoegaze band led by Will Anderson, known for their fuzz-drenched sound and standout tracks like "Julia's War" and "Candle." Their acclaimed 2023 album Cartwheel was followed by Raspberry Moon (2025), their first full-band record. The Hotline TNT tour 2025, The Path of Totality, kicks off July 19 in Allentown, PA.

Somewhere in the blur of endless touring, Anxious vocalist Grady Allen was sitting in a hotel room and stumbled upon a name typed into a long-forgotten memo on his phone: Bambi. “We should have named the band Bambi,” he recalls admitting to his bandmates. The tenor of the conversation is likely familiar to anyone of a certain age, when you reflect on choices that a younger version of yourself made and reckon with how things could be different if you’d chosen a different path. Bambi stuck with the band after that night and eventually it evolved from a “what-if” into the name of Anxious’ second full-length album.  Bambi is a record of remarkable growth, depth, ambition, and energy. It takes all the unsolvable and unavoidable problems of exiting adolescence and makes them resonate in urgent and authentic new ways. The album has deep roots in the storied lineage of Northeast tri-state hardcore and emo, but it also fully embraces the widescreen alternative rock songwriting at which Anxious have previously only hinted. It’s a statement of purpose, the kind of album that comes from a band reconciling where they’ve been with where they want to go. Bambi is the sound of Anxious putting everything on the line–and coming out on the other side better than ever.  In 2022, Anxious (Allen, guitarist/co-vocalist Dante Melucci, drummer Jonny Camner, bassist Sam Allen, and guitarist Tommy Harte) released their debut album, Little Green House, winning over fans and critics alike, and kicking off what would become two entire years of touring. It’s a tale as old as time: a young band forms with modest ambitions, spends several years organically developing their sound and writing their first record, then releases that album to acclaim and new opportunities, and the band finds their wildest dreams materializing alongside an incredibly unstable new life on the road. Guided by the spirits of a thousand acts that burned themselves out on the same grueling cross-country support tours, the band gamely takes on the challenge. Soon there are interests outside of their own dictating what they need to do in order to keep this coveted momentum going. The goalposts move, the novelty wears off, the missteps become less cute–oh and they need to cut two songs from the set tonight because the venue has a hard curfew to accommodate the dance night starting after the show. Don’t let any of this get in the way of writing a follow-up album, though.  As thoughts of LP2 loomed, Allen began to have questions about what being in a band for the long haul really looks like. “I started exploring what it would look like to finish college,” he explains. “I looked at the whole thing through this very binary lens: I could either do the band or go back to school. So when I unveiled everything to the guys I think everyone perceived it as ‘Well, Grady is just leaving.’ I think I probably thought about it that way, too. It caused this massive rift between me and everyone else. I think there was very much a sense of ‘Huh, the band may break up or maybe Grady just won’t be in the band anymore.’” A round of touring in Asia and the States proved surprisingly reinvigorating, and school began to seem like something that could coexist in balance with the band–but Allen’s faith needed repairing along with his relationship to his bandmates. Meanwhile, both he and Melucci were also struggling with the toll constant touring had taken on their respective romantic partnerships back home. To say this loaded atmosphere wasn’t conducive to creativity might be an understatement, but in the midst of all the turmoil, Bambi was created.  Inspired by “big swing” records like Blink-182’s self-titled or Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, Anxious set out to redefine the band without losing sight of what made them work in the first place. “The idea that Bambi should have been the band name sort of turned into this sentiment that got carried onto the LP,” says Allen. “Bambi is the band we could have been, that I want us to be–and I think the record is that.” The songs formed in fits and starts, with the bulk of the work taking place in the band’s homebase of Fairfield County, Connecticut, during a rare four-month break. “The whole album stayed a mystery to me for so long because there were so many wrong ways to do it,” says Melucci when considering the classic trope of a band attempting to avoid the sophomore slump. The members aimed to reconnect creatively in the same basement where they wrote Little Green House years before, but things didn’t truly take shape until they entered Barber Shop Studios with producer/engineer Brett Romnes (Oso Oso, The Movielife, Front Bottoms). “He just did a fantastic job challenging us and pushing our ideas into a whole new echelon,” Allen recalls. This level up is immediately apparent on the opening track “Never Said.” Beginning with a shimmering guitar line, different sonic elements are added one by one until the track explodes into the blend of melody and aggression at which Anxious excels. The heightened dynamics are matched by Allen’s voice, which pivots from warmth to grit on a dime as he sings about the disappointing aspects of devoting yourself to a subculture, only to find out that it’s full of the same alienating flaws of the mainstream. “As our bubble of music continues to expand and become more popular there seems to be this pushback from some people,” he explains. “The message they perpetuate is ‘there’s a lot of bullsh-t right now that’s not the real thing.’ It just seems like a lazy, purposely inflammatory argument with no real substance. If the only way you can define something you’ve made is by defining what it’s not, it sounds like it doesn’t have a ton of identity.” Bambi makes it clear that Anxious doesn't suffer from that issue. Their span of influences is wide, drawing on everything from The Smashing Pumpkins, to The Beach Boys, to Animal Collective, but these sounds are then filtered through a strong sense of what makes a good Anxious song. Lead single “Counting Sheep” perfectly encapsulates this creative ambition through dreamy atmosphere and blissful falsetto vocals colliding into walls of jagged guitars and Camner’s powerhouse drumming. Ping-ponging between subdued passages and giant riffs, the structure compliments the song’s lyrical themes of sleeping in as a way to avoid problems for another few moments. It’s all rounded out by one of the most anthemic choruses Anxious have ever penned, and a mind-bending guitar solo that would make James Iha proud. Elsewhere tracks like “Head & Spine,” “Sunder,” or “Tell Me Why” showcase the scope of Anxious’ evolution, tapping crunchy ‘90s rock guitarwork, layered ‘60s-esque harmonies, and Romnes’ crisp, modern production to create a sound that’s somewhere between Third Eye Blind’s self-titled and Saves The Day’s Stay What You Are. All while Allen and Melucci go on an unvarnished exploration of the frustrations of growing up and growing apart from the things that used to ground you. “The lyrics are really honest and direct,” Harte notes of his two co-writing bandmates. “For Dante and Grady, I think that it takes a lot of bravery to be able to be that vulnerable in a setting where everyone is on the other side of the control room. And also with the dual vocalist nature of the band, they’re sharing words with someone else and trusting someone else with that emotion. I think some of the most beautiful moments on the record are where their voices contrast.” Those moments particularly stand out on songs like “Audrey Go Again” or “Next Big Star,” where the band delve into acoustic guitars and intricate arrangements, highlighting their ability to provide big hooks and emotional payoffs without relying on volume alone.  There’s a distinct shift from being a gang of kids doing regional runs at VFWs to an established band touring worldwide. Anxious are treading a path they started on as high schoolers, and are now barreling through quarter-life crises at 55mph (Double Nickels on the Dime, but also the fastest speed to safely operate a 15-passenger van and trailer). While this familiar trajectory has defeated many bands, Bambi proves that Anxious won’t be one of them. The album comes to a close with “I’ll Be Around,” a stomping mid-tempo rock song that builds to a massive climax of swooning vocals and noisy guitars. While much of Bambi is imbued with disillusionment, “I’ll Be Around” zeros in on the bonds that make all the growing pains worthwhile. “I wrote it about the enduring nature of my friendship with Dante,” Allen says. “Him and I have been friends for over ten years now and although we’ve grown in different directions, we’ve been able to maintain this synergy and love. It feels like the right note to close the record on: hopeful, loving, forgiving–looking forward.” 

Three piece from Los Angeles. Love you