Cigarettes After Sex, led by Greg Gonzalez, has carved a unique niche in the music world with their sensual dream-pop. Their journey from playing small venues to headlining Madison Square Garden and London's O2 Arena is a testament to the power of their hypnotically beautiful songs and their ability to connect with listeners on a deeply emotional level.
The Rise of a Dream-Pop Phenomenon
Growing up in El Paso, Texas, Greg Gonzalez aspired to emulate “massive global phenomena” like Metallica or Queen. The initial disappointment of his band's first EP, 2012's I, not gaining traction was crushing. "I felt like a failure," he admits. However, over the next four years, the EP slowly gained momentum. Then, in 2015, the lead track "Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby" suddenly went viral. "I started getting notifications," he says. "I’d been bubbling away under the surface for years, then almost overnight it was like lightning struck.”
Following this breakthrough, Cigarettes After Sex experienced a surge in popularity. Their 2017 single "Apocalypse" has been streamed over a billion times, and they now headline major venues worldwide. “It’s everything I wished for,” he says.
The Essence of Their Music
As the singer-songwriter concedes, Cigarettes After Sex’s sensual dream-pop isn’t the sort of music that usually fills arenas. “It’s bedroom music,” he chuckles. “People tell me they put our music on to go to sleep, which is a compliment.”
The band’s hushed, reverb-heavy sound has found a home on Spotify playlists like “Sad Indie” and “Songs for Rainy Days,” as well as playlists that reflect the band’s name and explicit lyrics. Gonzalez’s androgynous voice further enhances the eroticism. Artists like Mazzy Star are a significant influence. “There’s something so otherworldly and unknowable about their sound,” says Gonzales. “It exists in a different plane.”
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Gonzalez’s inspirations also include Julee Cruise, whose ethereal voice entranced a generation via David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet and TV series Twin Peaks. “Julee Cruise is definitely coming from a place that we are,” he explains, “and the way Lynch’s movies use late-1950s/early-60s songs such as Roy Orbison’s In Dreams; they’re beautiful melodies which feel nostalgic and have a kind of gravity to them, but feel surreal.”
"Dreaming of You": A Lyrical Analysis
"Dreaming of You" is a dreamy and ethereal track that delves into infatuation and longing. The song captures the essence of being captivated by someone from afar and fantasizing about being with them.
The lyrics in the verses express a sense of curiosity and admiration towards the person the singer is dreaming about, with lines like "Seen you from afar, Wondered who you are" and "Want you, yes, I do, Bet you never knew it."
The repetition of the chorus, where the singer repeatedly expresses that they are "dreaming of you," emphasizes the intensity of their feelings and the constant presence of this person in their thoughts. The chorus serves as a mantra of sorts, highlighting the all-encompassing nature of the singer's infatuation.
The bridge of the song adds a layer of emotional depth, with the lines "You're the one I'm calling on, You're the one who's calling me to have it" suggesting a mutual connection and a desire for a deeper relationship with the person they are dreaming about.
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Overall, "Dreaming of You" is a beautifully melancholic track that captures the bittersweet experience of yearning for someone who may be out of reach.
CIGARETTES AFTER SEX - Dreaming of you (live)
The Live Experience
A sea of “black from head to toe” was expected and delivered at a Cigarettes After Sex concert. The excited atmosphere was almost unfitting compared to the calm, lo-fi music to come, yet, as the lights went down and the delicate, minor-keyed orchestral introduction began, the anticipation of the crowd readily turned into a united sense of awe.
The band, consisting of Gonzalez, Randall Miller (bass), and Jacob Tomsky (drums), creates a relaxed ambience that closely mirrors Gonzalez’s words “as soft as cinnamon”. The black and white lighting on stage, mixed with lyrics like “you would use your songs to say the words you couldn’t say,” aligns with a film-noir silent movie feeling, adjacent to the mysterious, vintage nature of the band.
The melancholic beginning of songs like ‘Dark Vacay’ brings about sentimental emotions in the audience, as the arena lights up with phone torches, creating a strong resonance between each fan present and the words “feel the world around you”.
X's: A Familiar Yet Evolving Sound
Forthcoming third album X’s details the four-year rise and fall of his last serious relationship with trademark candour. While maintaining their signature sound, X's explores themes of love, desire, and the complexities of relationships.
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The album is apparently a kind of post-mortem on a four-year relationship, but for once Gonzalez hints more than he says, and though there is a sense of private longing on “Silver Sable” - does the title relate to the ambiguous Marvel super/anti-heroine? - specific details like “‘Number of the Beast’ is on your Walkman” don’t necessarily feel like they belong to the same relationship as other songs, like the funereal march of “Hideaway.”
While some critics argue that the album's sound is too similar to their previous work, others appreciate the consistent mood and the emotional depth of the lyrics. The album ends with “Ambien Slide” and again, although it documents the emotional extremes of betrayal and love, it’s just too sonically similar to its surroundings for the extremes to register and, in keeping with its title, feels sedated by its own disinterested gloom.
Ultimately, X's is a strong album that showcases Cigarettes After Sex's unique ability to create a captivating atmosphere and explore complex emotions through their music.
The Mystery and Allure
Their gigs present the black-clad band in near darkness. Fittingly, Gonzalez often opts not to turn his camera on for interviews, embracing the mystery that invites listeners in. “Mystery invites you in. It makes your brain go crazy in a nice way and you want to solve the riddle. Like [another Lynch film] Mulholland Drive.”
Growing up, Gonzalez’s father worked in video movie distribution. “So I had a closet of a thousand movies. I always thought: ‘How can I write a song like a movie, where you picture a scene in your mind?’” He’d initially formed Cigarettes After Sex in 2008 as a New Order/Erasure-type electropop band, but after pouring more emotions into the songs he recorded the first EP in an echoey stairwell at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he’d been a “terrible” music student a decade before. “You’d walk in that stairway and all of a sudden it felt like you were in outer space,” he remembers. “I always thought: ‘Wow, we should get a band in here.’” Once he did, the Cigarettes sound was born.
Gonzalez’s lyrics are romantic, sensual and occasionally very sexual. Witness lyrics such as Kiss It Off Me’s “Saw you on the side of the road / I could see you were walking slow, drinking a Slurpee / In a peach baseball cap, falling in my lap / You were so thirsty.”
“It’s hard for me to express emotions, but I feel things very deeply and can process them in the songs,” he says. “I write about situations to get to the heart of what I felt. Yes, some lyrics might be a bit dirtier or a bit much for some people, but to tell the story I have to be honest and leave in details that others wouldn’t.”
Gonzalez rejects the suggestion that any of the lyrics might objectify women. “I’m not saying ‘every women needs to be this way,’” he argues. “Absolutely not. The songs are little love letters to that person … compliments on what they were wearing, their hair … it’s very personal.”
He says he is constantly amazed by the number of people who tell him that such songs tell their stories, too. “They’re my stories, but anyone can share them,” he suggests. “That’s why I want this to be as big as possible, because that will mean it’s powerful.”