Cigarettes After Sex
Cigarettes After Sex
So you have a well-established and staunch aversion to most sleepy slowcore balladeers? Believe me, I get it. However, Cigarettes After Sex’s Greg Gonzalez delivers captivating and culturally relevant love (and hookup) songs amidst a dream pop backdrop that is so brilliantly vivid that it might just beg a change of position.
His influences are undeniable – Mojave 3, Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star to name a few – lending a romantic familiarity to his clever, boyish wordplay. Although some may find his lyrics a bit sexed up, for instance “Sweet” where he sings “Watching the video that you sent me/the one where you’re showering with wet hair dripping,” the subject matter is certainly nothing that Billboard Top 40 and R&B classics haven’t flirted with for decades. The difference is that Gonzalez’s tender tenor is so sweet and restrained that any hint of perviness cooks off leaving only a completely palatable ear-kissing syrup.
This isn’t the kind of album that doesn’t come with adverse side affects though; draw a bubble bath, light a candle and put this LP on at mid-volume. I guarantee you’ll be pregnant by the end of side A. (Partisan)