Citizen – “Big Mouth”

Citizen – “Big Mouth”

Citizen, the Michigan/Ohio band, have their roots in the punk and post-hardcore underground universe, and they still tour on that circuit. But increasingly, Citizen don’t really sound like anyone’s idea of a punk band. A year and a half ago, the band came out with As You Please, a searching and majestic album that drew as much on Nirvana as it did on Jawbreaker. And today, the band follows it up with a new one-off track that pretty much just sounds like rock music, no genre tag necessary.

“Big Mouth,” the new Citizen song, is something that could’ve gotten airplay on modern rock radio at any point between 1991 and 2003. (Maybe it could still get play on modern rock radio now? 2003 is just the moment that I checked out completely, so I cannot confirm.) It’s a brash, riff-driven howler, the kind of thing we don’t hear too many Bandcamp bands making.

Citizen frontman Mat Kerekes produced the song, and it takes lyrical aim at some cooler-than-thou egotist who’s “wearing his suit and tie” and “always looking clean and handsome.” Kerekes responds to this aesthetically pleasing jerkoff by offering to fight him. We don’t know the story behind this song yet, but I would like to imagine that Kerekes is really pissed off at his day-job boss. (Citizen tour some pretty big venues, so Kerekes probably doesn’t even have a day job, but that’s the narrative I’m going with.) You can hear it below.

“Big Mouth” is out now at the streaming services, and you can buy it at Bandcamp.

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