It was not until a few years later that I saw them again. I saved enough money to buy a used 2006 Nissan Sentra and I slapped the sticker on the bumper. The first time I saw Citizen was at Warped Tour, where I bought Youth on CD and they all signed it for me, as well as a sticker with their name on it. It wasn’t just that I came across gifs reciting the lyrics of their hit “The Night I Drove Alone” that captured the unbridled depression that would soak the internet for the rest of eternity: “I should’ve crashed the car / The night I drove alone.”Īfter school, I took the bus to my minimum wage job washing dishes at a bakery where I would put earphones in and blast music until my eardrums hurt while I wielded a sponge over an array of culinary utensils for hours.

Somewhere in the mess, the artwork of Youth caught my eye: The title spelled out in all roses, looking like a design on a Brandy Melville shirt or a piece of Lana Del Rey merchandise. I was graduating from my attachment to third wave emo bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy, easing into alternative indie (or as Tumblr called it, “soft grunge”) groups like Arctic Monkeys and The Neighbourhood. It immediately solidified their place in the scene amongst bands like La Dispute and Neck Deep, who I got into as I started high school by traversing through Tumblr. Unveiled on Jten years ago this weekend - via Run For Cover records, Youth was the strongest a debut record could possibly be.

Punch mosh pit gif