Citizen

by Sordid Ordeal

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about

‘Citizen’ is the second single from Sordid Ordeal’s debut album, ‘When I left Town’. Opening with a
menacing guitar, the songs siren call sounds from the rooftops to the halls, hailing in a raging band
raining fury through the airwaves.
The song is an incendiary political outcry from the era of Howard and Rudd that rings harrowingly
true in the era of Turnbull and Morrison some 15 years later. Railing against racist state propaganda,
youth suicide, police brutality, deaths in custody, financial dispossession, homophobia and domestic
violence, its an outburst at the darkness sitting at the heart of a national character and a rallying cry
against the Murdoch press that fuels the violence it profits off.
Shot in a stone mason’s yard, the ‘Citizen’ clip shows Sordid Ordeal in their live format set in contrast
to reels of Australia’s historical turning points.

lyrics

You fall asleep in a piggy hotel
On the back of ‘Bleach’ and Irvine Welsh
Cause Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Giddens fucking lied
I dig your house it’s a fucken nice home
I hear your Ma’s suburban lock and load
Is the white picket fence out front import Walachian pine
I still see steeple swords
Attacking lower house law
Why haven’t we cut the fucken cord
Seventeen in a Leeton high school
Taught by Rohm, part time host playschool
What do I believe?
Why the fuck should we have to be nice
When some among us don’t share the same damn rights
It seems to me I don’t owe no apology
The burning bin on Elizabeth Street
Pointed to a biblical defeat
The needle in the class of 1989
Nevermind the refugees in
John Howard’s administration
They found their own Karma Sutran lines
Dreadnought Maggie’s housewife tabloids
Daughters Chleo, Dolly and Boy’s Toy
Bullshit primetime ‘Triumph des Willans’
Try being my colour in Cronulla
When all your friends go home and watch ‘Airport Sec’
And Kruddy-love expects us all to integrate
“No fucken Kashmir in my club”
“Don’t make me call security, Vic Thug”
Who shoot dead teenage boys in local parks
Government cockknuckle contradictions
Interstate civil war mongering frictions
Julius Streicher politicians
Livin in a bedrock nation state of
Burning beds and racist sexist
Redneck arsehole population
Suicide in old sheep stations
Women with black eyes in waiting
Counter-action education

Fireballs at Frankston Station
One Nation capitulation
Lead us not in to temptation
Late night paddy wagon transportation
Sleeping in a suburban police station

credits

released December 13, 2022
Written by Laurence Hewson
Performed by Sordid Ordeal
Recorded at Studio One.be by Dave Warner
Mixed by Brent Quirk
Mastered by Jack the Bear

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about

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Sordid Ordeal Melbourne, Australia

Sordid Ordeal are an Australiana stout rock band from Naarm. They combine folkish story-telling and
ballads with blistering, mangy rock and epic anthems, welding together both the abrasive & heavy
with the gentle & intimate.

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