Live Review: Citizen - Prospect Building, Bristol 29/10/2026
Metamorphosis through sound. Citizen’s ability to mould and redefine themselves continually has proved yet again wildly successful through both studio and stage, delivering an unforgettable show on their current UK tour.
Citizens’ metamorphosis through sound blends seamlessly through their live shows and consistently creates a genre-agnostic and emotionally vulnerable blend of colliding genres. This is something that has become routine for the California native five-piece and only continues to become more prevalent with each passing release. This current tour around their most recent album ‘Halcyon Blues’ has finely tied a new string to their already well-equipped bow in the form of some slower acoustic tracks and a well-rounded, synthy, heavier indie rock sound. This stylistic stance change has proven a common part of their creative process and truly allows them to land from all angles, both live and on record and to finally see this showcased in person worked fantastically. Citizen also had some fantastic backup on this leg of their globe-trotting 2026 tour in the form of UK-based budding three-piece Thistle., and the brilliantly hand-selected California native Modern Color, who brought with them a fervour of chaos and cutting, precise and deeply emotional songwriting.
Our opener, Thistle., have cultivated a truly unique sound for a three-piece band. Splitting the vocals largely between the bassist and the guitarist, Thistle manage to forge a sound reminiscent of that 2010s melodic hardcore renaissance while still texturing and wrapping their product in their own personal and greatly effective styling. They ran through a significant number of songs with an unbelievable no-fuss attitude, barely stopping for air through all of their brooding tension. These thunderous and roaring riffs, drum fills, and bass parts followed seismic patterns and felt like truly cathartic bursts of emotion and angst. Every note laid the foundation for the next chord or the next fill, which in turn built tension you could cut with a knife before hammering through these vicious crescendos and more harmonics and headstock rips than you can shake a stick at. Thistle have had a brilliant year this year with appearances at Outbreak London among a myriad of other shows that have continued to boost their platform, and this tour with Citizen is a definite leg up for such a talented young band.
The next support, Modern Color drew immense amounts of influence from the genre around them, something they have used to craft a great melodic hardcore sound and feel. The lyrics were truly scathing and pulled straight from the heart. This band clearly felt like more than music; each element of the band, from the vocals to the guitars to the rhythm section, was iconographic of the vials of emotion that had been poured into their song composition over and over again. This refined emotional style of playing made for absolute pandemonium at times and captured an excellent energy. There is this fine line of presence and energy that is walked by these melodic hardcore and surrounding bands that can often be easily blurred or lost to the wayside; however, every band that showed up did indeed show off. Some of Modern Color’s tracks like ‘On and Off’ and ‘Pale’ were shining examples of this attitude and approach, again cementing a dense and brooding atmosphere, creating comfort in the unfamiliar through sting skips and tonally consistent vocals and notation.
After the tone had been set, it was finally time to witness the masters at work; each iteration of an already established and foundational band for their genre was on full display. Seamless transition and an amalgamation of every style that had been curated through multiple years of both internal and external influence was laid bare for nearly two thousand people to see, and this vulnerability is one of the special parts of their performance; each new iteration is a new scar, a new process and a new badge of honour, and to see Citizen sew all of these together while still creating a high-impact and thrilling live show is a truly uncommon phenomenon. They started with a 3-track run from the new album, ‘Halcyon Blues’, leading with ‘Good Fortune’ to resounding applause and success. An easy measure of success for a project is crowd response, and for the new material to be welcomed with as warm a heart as their soul-crushing 2013 album ‘Youth’ was anything but a surprise. They continued to blend songs from every project as they marched through their set without a sign of relenting. While the opening portion contained chunks of new tracks, older tracks like ‘I Want To Kill You’ and 'Sick and Impatient’ snuck through the fence and blew the heads off the entire crowd, acting as easy crowd pleasers that kept the momentum strong before allowing for gasps of air throughout the set as the band shed the layers of each album style. The back-to-back performance of ‘Halcyon Blues’ and ‘Always the Last One to Leave’ truly hammered home the rich atmosphere that they had cultivated around this new synthy and punchy sound.
The second half of the set followed much of the same pattern, with that consistent musical mask switching for each track while still keeping the same feel and approach to their performance. This closing half proved something I predicted in my album review even more correct than I assumed. With their performance of ‘Matador ’, it is hard to convey the sheer brevity and power of this track on the stage, but the second the lull builds to an inescapable pressure, it explodes into the punk-driven and vicious chorus that had the whole room exerting an absolutely maximal amount of energy. This portion of the set was also home to a stretch of old, scornful and deeply personal friends of everyone in that room. This four-track run from ‘Youth’ started with ‘Roam the Room’, ran through ‘The Summer ’, ’ Sleep’, and finished on ‘How Does It Feel?’. Repressed emotion poured from each and every member of the crowd and collapsed into coarse vocals in response to hearing the soundtrack of many heartbreaks and ailments of the soul, a feeling so cathartic it can only truly be captured at shows such as this. The show drew to a close on ‘Death Dance Approximately’ and ‘Highs and Lows’, two crowd favourites, one old, one fresh and the reaction to both was reflected and teeming with energy and reckless abandon. After a short goodbye, Citizen returned to the stage for the big one; dull and concussive feedback ran through the room as years of torment and ache were released from the band and the crowd simultaneously as they launched into ‘The Night I Drove Alone ’, easily the band’s biggest and most impactful song. While some may see it as therapy, many others will likely see it as a reason for therapy, and this grasp over people’s emotions is something that makes that song and that album in particular stay with you for such a long time.
Citizens ability to keep the same energy, feel and atmosphere throughout so many different projects is rarely captured by bands and to see their creative process and external influence change with every passing live show and album really makes this band feel personal to so many people, and as a band that seemingly get better with every passing tourist evident that there are endless forms of Citizen out there just waiting to be discovered by the bands members and its fans alike. Citizen head out on the European leg of their tour, so if you find yourself on the mainland, witness the sheer brilliance they have to offer so you don’t have to miss the memories you never made, and if, like me, you unfortunately can’t follow this unbelievable band around the globe, support your local scene and smaller bands and catch the next powerhouse performer before they find out just who they are.
Words by Josh Pook
