Citizens! ‘Here We Are’ Debut Album

Stylesiren Watchlist favourites, Citizens! release their debut album ‘Here We Are’ today, as we expected, it’s a keeper!

We’ve been banging on about Citizens! for quite some time now, waiting for the release of their debut album ‘Here We Are’ so today is a happy day as we get our first full listen (Listen to ‘Here We Are’ streaming here).

Citizens! (the exclamation mark is important) are Martyn, Thom, Mike, Lawrence and Tom and hail from London, they’ve been on our watchlist radar since the YouTube release of the infectious 80′s inspired ‘True Romance’ in November 2011.

Citizens! sound has a distinctly early eighties feel to it, think David Bowie or the likes of Steve Harley and David Sylvian. Pop with an edge, says band member Mike on their statement that they are reclaiming pop “Pop is not a dirty word. It’s a holy one.”

The band signed to French electronic/indie label Kitsuné last year, also home to Two Door Cinema Club and Delphic. ‘Here We Are’ is produced by Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, so far so fantastic. NME are in agreement “The result is an album as art smart as Franz, as disco droll as Hot Chip, as pose pop as The Naked And Famous and as catchy and cool as Two Door lot on the other lot’s Indian cycling holiday.”

The album is summer perfection, if we had to pick some favourite tracks (truly loving them all) the already well played ‘True Romance’, ‘Girlfriend’ and ‘Reptile’ stand out. So far on first few listens we’re also loving ‘Let’s Go All The Way’ and ‘I Wouldn’t Want To’ and ‘Know Yourself’. We’re disappointed not to see Citizens! on any of the Irish festival line ups this summer but there’s still time for a sneaky late addition, fingers crossed!

There’s an official video for ‘True Romance’ but we much prefer this brilliantly camp version the band also released, set to footage from 1987 Telugu movie “Pasivadi Pranam” starring the legendary Indian actor Chiranjeevi.