Review Summary: Have you ever come across an Instagram/Tumblr post that has no business being that beautiful?
Cigarettes After Sex takes the idea of the modern sexual relationship and hookup culture and tries to capture the beautiful moments in between. The reason this works is that the album never oversteps the limits of this premise. Most sophisticated romantic albums give in to the temptation of overreaching towards topics such as existentialism, identity and such.
Cigarettes however, relishes in the very transience and littleness of these encounters- we have the fantasy of falling for a stranger in
K, the rediscovery of childhood love in
Apocalypse, the reading between the lines of a sext in
Sweet, and the raunchy rebelliousness of
Young and Dumb.
So it’s late morning, your coffee is going cold and you don’t want to finish it because you’re afraid there’ll be nothing left to do afterwards while memories of an ex-lover linger harmlessly in your mind. Moments like these are what the this album is made for. You put it on and immediately it becomes apparent that the album is all about frontman Greg Gonzalez’s satiny and smokey androgynous vocals slow dancing with aching guitar apreggios. His voice sounds romantic, intoxicated and teasing in equal measure. At the back, there are the basslines that are diffusive yet still surprisingly playful. On the other hand, I felt the drumming could’ve been slightly more adventurous. There were several opportunities for a jazzy fill or a roll but it simply doesn’t happen. To their credit however, the drums do work in a Nick Mason sense of not drawing attention away from the center stage and keeping the whole act grounded. There is also a gentle layer of atmospheric pads that help create a mellow and misty ambience.
Each of the songs feels like a private Polaroid of sorts- they have a lovely sense of personal space to them. Even if Gonzalez doesn’t mention a location in the lyrics, you’re transported there- be it to a cinema theater, the back of a car, or a bedroom. This isn’t achieved through complex moodboards or diverse instrumentation or anything, rather by simply using the right amount of reverb (and delay) on the instruments. The lyrics are mostly aboveboard and restrained but every now and then there’s a line that has enough flair to become instantly iconic (
“Your lips, my lips. Apocalypse”). The songs aren’t narratively connected, they’re all discrete. However, there is consistency in the experience as it feels very much like finding a box of these old photographs and reliving one hazy memory after another.
Using dream-pop as a musical identity has been done before by bands such as Slowdive and Lush.
Cigarettes takes a much more youthful premise and dresses it with the proven broth of laid back beats, wavy guitar chord progressions and vocal hooks, lyrics that are half romantic and half risque and a fuzzy and warm production style. The resultant album is effortlessly modern, deceptively mature and beautifully minimalistic. The question that remains from me is- what next. Gonzalez and his three piece backing band have a burgeoning fan base that not only has gotten hooked onto the band’s distinctive and infectious musical identity but would also be perfectly happy with more of the same in the next album. However, I would like Gonzalez to incorporate elements of horror-core like he did in the previous EP. I would also like the future songs to have slightly more variations within themselves and perhaps they could even introduce some electronics. The fact that I’m delegating these things to the next album should tell you what I feel about this one. For me, the occurrence of this album is as serendipitous as the events it describes. It really is like a Tumblr post that has no business being so beautiful.
