10 City And Colour Songs For New Fans

There are some voices that you truly wish you could hear again for the first time – ones of ethereal beauty and resonant power that instantly transport you to a time and place.

Dallas Green – who has been making music under the moniker of City And Colour since 2004 – possesses one of those singing voices. Across a career that's taken him from guns-blazing post-hardcore to bittersweet folk-rock, Green's music is the kind that gets tattooed on your brain – and, for many fans, quite literally tattooed on their skin.

If you're reading this, you're likely new to Green's music – perhaps being a Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats fan intrigued by Rateliff's co-headlining tour partner for January next year. If this is the case, take these ten songs as your jumping-off point and get yourself acquainted with this remarkably talented veteran.

Happiness By The Kilowatt

We start on a technicality, as this song did not begin life as a City And Colour song. The closing track to Alexisonfire's second album, 2004's Watch Out!, was one of the first major showcases of Green's soaring vocals and emotionally charged lyrics – the same year he launched his solo career, no less.

On his first live album, its distorted guitars and driving drums were substituted for tender piano balladry – allowing the song's skeletal form to blossom and bloom in a new light. If you want to see Green's evolution from formidable post-hardcore sideman to centre-stage troubadour, it all begins here.

Day Old Hate

Well before City And Colour became a full-band affair, Dallas Green wrote long and lonesome songs on his... well, lonesome. Such solitude rings out loud and clear in the quietest moments of the project's debut studio album Sometimes – which, by the time Green returns to Australia, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Day Old Hate, one of the album's highlights, is a song for lost souls longing for connection and survival. Green's pensive delivery, matched with chiming acoustic guitars, serves as a pitch-perfect example of his solo era and remains one of the finest songs of his 20-plus-year career.

Save Your Scissors

In a unique skewering of unrequited love songs, Save Your Scissors positions Green as the receiver rather than the giver. While still caring for the person in question, he suggests their efforts go towards someone who is capable of feeling the same way. A major-key song amidst an album of minors, and with a “doo-doo-doo” hook no less, Scissors could be considered Green's earliest dalliance with pop – a long time before he began making collaborative albums with P!nk (yes, really). It's all enough to make you fall in love with the man yourself – if you haven't already.

What Makes A Man?

Green was in his mid-20s when he wrote What Makes A Man? but the wisdom imparted in its storytelling suggests mileage well beyond his years - even now, at 46. The song is one of many tributes Green has penned to early country and blues across his career – including within Alexisonfire, believe it or not. Here, he ruminates about the end of life and the fear that dictated it up to that point. Rustic resonator guitars twang and bend in perfect juxtaposition with Green's pained, plaintive vocal – a love letter to a musical past that seals the fate of a doomed future.

Waiting…

Here, we have the first song that began to break the City And Colour name outside the immediate bubble of those within the punk and hardcore scene. While not a hit single by any stretch, it's safe to say that a lot of people's journey with Green's music began with Waiting. What a maiden voyage, too: It remains a remarkable showcase of his vocals, from tender intimacy to the soaring chorus. The stomping folk-rock arrangement, too, was one of the first City And Colour songs to feel truly widescreen. There's a reason it survives to this very day as a setlist staple.

Fragile Bird

Cry Judas, because City And Colour has gone electric. Album three, Little Hell, saw some major sonic transitions for the project – which make themselves present and accounted for on one of the record's standout moments, Fragile Bird.

Against the churn of a bluesy guitar, the hum of a Fender Rhodes and the persistent drive of drums, Green sings of his wife's ongoing night terrors. It's done in a manner that interweaves abstract metaphor and home-truth realism in tragic matrimony. It's much more rock than folk, which also framed many of Little Hell's more interesting moments. Consider it City And Colour taking flight.

The Hurry And The Harm

The title track from Green’s fourth album established City And Colour’s transition from solo troubadour to flourishing full band. A decade-plus on, one can view this era as a crossroads. While many chose to be cynical about Green supposedly losing sight of the project's origins, you can also perceive this as boldly taking a chance on a full metamorphosis. On this blissful album opener, glistening pedal steel washes over a low, shoegaze-inspired keyboard drone and sparkling drops of cymbal accents – all while Green muses on the commotion of modern life. It all blends together to form a small slice of paradise.

Woman

There comes a time in every man's life – as, no doubt, you're all aware – when he must write a nine-minute psychedelic blues epic, subsequently reshaping his entire musical outlook in its wake thereafter. Woman, as luck would have it, is a nine-minute psychedelic blues epic. It's handily the most ambitious song in the City And Colour canon and one that remains just as impressive nearly a decade removed. Green has always been indebted to his fellow countryman (and fellow Ontario native) Neil Young, but Woman feels more at home as his own personal Crazy Horse tribute. Rock & roll will never die.

Imagination

If the bright splashes of colour on the album cover didn't give it away, A Pill For Loneliness is City And Colour’s efforts to expand our of the sepia tones by which the project's music has often been defined. It's still an emotional record, of course, but there's a brimming brightness and wider sonic palette than perhaps any previous record. Imagination is one of Pill's more underrated moments. Atop a pounding snare, Green's dreamy guitars and head-voice vocals bathe in warmth as he sonically seeks a way out of the darkness—a persistent pop song from the pen of a perennial pessimist.

Underground

Dallas Green has been singing about the end since the beginning. Little Hell literally closes with the refrain, “I'm singing my death song”. Underground is a subversion of this longstanding trope – not because it's not about death, but because it's about not going gentle into that good night. Inspired by the tragic loss of a dear friend, Underground presents as a celebratory effort for simply being around to enjoy whatever you've got left. It's a warm hug as much as it is a memento mori, and arguably, no current songwriter can toe that line quite the way Green does.

City And Colour will tour Australia in January 2025 alongside Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Alex Lahey (all shows except Perth) and Caitlin Harnett & The Pony Boys (Perth only). All dates and ticketing information can be found via Frontier Touring.

​Presented by Chugg Entertainment, Frontier Touring & Love Police

CITY AND COLOUR WITH NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS

​AUSTRALIAN TOUR - JANUARY 2025

​With Special Guests ALEX LAHEY & CAITLIN HARNETT & THE PONY BOYS

TUESDAY 14 JANUARY - Riverstage | Brisbane QLD (Lic. All Ages)

THURSDAY 16 JANUARY - Hordern Pavilion | Sydney NSW (Lic. All Ages)

SATURDAY 18 JANUARY - Sidney Myer Music Bowl | Melbourne VIC (Lic. All Ages)

MONDAY 20 JANUARY - Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre | Adelaide SA (Lic. All Ages)

THURSDAY 23 JANUARY - Red Hill Auditorium | Perth WA (Lic. 13+)