The New Citizen Kane’s new EP ‘Causing A Commotion’ is an airy late-summer breeze that slips into something heavier once you let it in. Opening track “Meet Me On Street Corners (Synthphonica Radio Mix)” bubbles with an undercurrent of restless yearning beneath its warm waves of synth. The textures wash over like neon city lights on a rainy night. And yet, there’s also that beat, holding steady as if carrying a message in the way it falls in and out of time. “Hearts Aren’t Made Of Wood ’25” follows in a completely different key. It’s a reimagined cut that still carries that initial track’s feeling of nostalgia but refreshes it somehow. This time around, there’s a fragility in the vocal delivery that bounces around an electronic groove that’s almost speaking about the ability to love as an act of both yielding and withstanding.
The third track, “Ratbag Joy (Alternative Version)”, catapults the EP into a brighter and comparatively less downtrodden soundscape. It’s looser, more playful, and much more at odds with itself to stay interesting. At the same time, it has that feeling of an “underground” track, one that feels both anonymous and designed for those with the ears to hear it. The contrast works because it also serves to reset the atmosphere just before hitting that centerpiece. And the centerpiece here is the EP’s most magnetic track. “Subconscious” was already released as part of the larger, ongoing ‘PSYCHEDELIKA’ project. It’s a track that looks into the conflicted nature of taboo feelings. As one half of a diptych, it maps out the dance between our higher functions and animal instincts. The Primordial Mix is the fever dream of a song burning with desire and longing. The Reason Mix is the same desire curbed by restrictions. Both sound like different characters narrating the same set of feelings. This kind of split song version is rare but pretty ingenious and, more importantly, it allows listeners to sink into that initial struggle of the heart and mind.
‘Causing A Commotion’ works as a cohesive work in its own right because all three songs act as discrete pieces that tie into Kane’s overall emotional electronic project. The EP is drenched in synths and grooves that feel hypnotic and narcotic. But beneath that feeling is a body more open than closed, longing and unguarded. It feels both personal and as if it’s filling a space larger than it might deserve. More than a preview for the larger project, ‘PSYCHEDELIKA’, this is an EP that works in its own right and seems to channel the same electricity and tension between late-summer nights, clandestine emotions, and all those words we can’t really say out loud but that we can always hear when listening to music.
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