Album Notes

Voted one of Deli Magazine's Best 10 Rock Albums Of 2004
"Elegant, intelligent, captivating."

"Are We There Yet?, the debut from New York's The Citizens, is an album-lover's album. Well-paced and cleverly sequenced, it is, in many ways, a throwback to the great records of the 1970s, and fresh enough not to sound like one...Lesseraux can sing his ass off and isn't afraid to do it."
-Pitchfork

"The production is staggeringly beautiful, big clean crazy sounds, lush, exotic harmonic twists, mind twisting lyrics...very kool stuff."
-Greg Tate of the Village Voice

"The first question that comes to mind when you listen to The Citizens' debut album is "where did these guys come from?!"...a plethora of moods and passions that elevate this record to 'surprise' status and leaves the listener entirely gratified by its conclusion."
-Tiny Mix Tapes

"The Citizens have created a sound that defies anything coming out of New York City... a beautifully crafted record."
-Lab Productions

"The New York foursome snags a thread or two from nearly every rock vein that preceded them and weaves them together to form an amazing album...If The Citizens' intended destination is a place of their own craft that lies beyond the boring boundaries of traditional pop, they can stop driving."
-Delusions of Adequacy (PICK OF THE WEEK 6-15-04)

"Lovely mini-epics bursting with jangly guitars... fresh and innovative"
-Splendid

"They can do jangly rock, they can groove, and they can make you want to start edging nervously towards the door. The Citizens are already a solid, imaginative, passionate band, creating a tapestry of sound that collects threads from 60s rock, 70s rebellion, 80s experimentation, and modern confrontational alt rock."
- Indie-Music.com

"Rubberneckers unite for a fool-hearty romp through the Residents-inspired, lounge lizard lunacy of a completely fucked "Deck Full of Jokers" that makes Tom Waits sound sober...subtle as a car crash though just as strangely alluring...The Citizens offer hope that the Big Apple may still have some tricks up its sleeve."
- FakeJazz

The Citizens Bio
As Understood by Guitarist, Thom Loubet

Mark and I played together for the first time in a cramped, multicultural funkadelic in late 2002. It worked. Then, Mark asked me to play guitar on his own project. I went way up to the Bronx with a bag of effects and no idea what to expect. What I found was the thing I'd been practicing for since I was eleven.

I brought in Jason and Jason brought in John. Sounds biblical, and sometimes it sorta does. We wrote and recorded our album, Are We There Yet?, all over New York City. We decided early on that we should do whatever it took to bring to life the sounds we heard in our heads. In the end that meant using three different studios with five engineers for countless hours. Sometimes it hurt. When we finally exhaled... the result was sort of, well, eclectic. But then there's this eerie poignancy underneath it all...

We'll be the first ones to tell you this band goes a lot of places. It's who we are as a group. We've all been around the block-fronting the half-formed or riding along as sidemen in sidecars. It was fun, and it made us good. But this is ours. This is a fusion of everything we've learned, and a chance to play only what we love.