By It’s our Bandcamp Pick of the Week, featuring Citrus Jr.’s restless and youthful SoCal emo album SIGN MY CAST, out now via self versed Records.
Citrus Jr. – SIGN MY CAST
Genre: Emo, Post-Hardcore
Favorite Tracks: “Lois Vs. Evil,” “Something Real,” “Baja Blast From The Past”
There is an entrapping loneliness and isolation to Southern California. These people need no sympathy, of course, and I myself conjure that thought from a palatial one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. But I’m mostly drawing on that sentiment after years spent living in Orange County, steeped and defined by friends and locals and a fair number of trips to the Inland Empire and San Diego; you project a sense of tormented stasis despite the beautiful climate and even more beautiful people. Sure, Los Angeles can be lonely and isolating, but the glitzy hustle and bustle of Tinseltown is uniquely specific, one defined by lifelong Angelinos and taken advantage of by transplants. But to the south and east you meet townies that wouldn’t even dare drive to LA. These are locals rooted to the OC, IE, and SD whose despair is defined by an unknowable or unaccepted struggle to accept the theoretical paradise they call home amidst a long, stagnant lifetime failing to escape conservative homesteads, Republican college towns, and military beach cities. There are kids who grow old in the towns they’re from. But inside SoCal natives’ hearts is a chilling unrest rooted in the Manifest Destiny of it all: We’ve arrived at paradise but we will still find ways to be bored, sad, and angry.
Here we enter Oceanside, CA. Stuck in a no-man’s land well south of Laguna Beach but before San Diego begins becoming interesting, and defined largely by Marine base Camp Pendleton and a proximity to SoCal’s worst theme park, LEGOLAND, it’s a place I’ve mindlessly visited and have seen friends come and go from. I don’t know the members of Citrus Jr, the excellent upstart quote-unquote “farwest” emo band, but they do a good job approximating what I’d imagine young people in Oceanside to feel amidst that listless rage. Despite only being a band since 2022, you’d be forgiven for hearing a rejuvenated fourth wave edge to their mathy guitar playing and secluding howls; SIGN MY CAST, their latest, has all the trappings of the genres peak while somehow mostly avoiding the cringe beyond clips from 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, references to MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, pun titles like “Baja Blast From The Past,” and even a cover of cult San Diego band The Cry’s obscured standout “Alone.”
At its core, Citrus Jr. are trying, desperately, to not turn into restless, unhappy, ignorant townies, grappling with there being nowhere else to go. They’re optimistic. They’re scared. But perhaps the title of the opening track, “Sisyphus,” says it all, wishing, perhaps needing, him to be happy pushing the boulder, as though that would give meaning to the exhaustive quiescence of life in Oceanside, CA.
“All my friends are moving off to college / and I feel left to die / I don’t think I can do this for four more years.”
“I’m excited for my future / For the first time in a long time / Feels like I’m going places.”
“Why does everything change / why does everything end.”
“I’m afraid / That I won’t amount to anything / That all my hopes / And all my dreams / Are all they’ll ever be.”
It’s enough to want to give these kids a hug and assure them that someday they’ll get outta San Diego county. But it makes SIGN MY CAST, certainly among the year’s best emo albums, an important snapshot of youth in transition. Give it a listen over on Bandcamp.
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