Album Review: Cigarettes After Sex’s Debut Show The Broken Sensuality Of Love

 

I reviewed Cigarettes After Sex, and was riveted by their uses of old, torn city images to build an emotional tear in the crowd. Their music is based of the quietness of inner turmoil. The near- silent whisperings of insecurities and fallouts gnawing your mind as you go about your day acting like you are completely in love with your routine. To capture the dailyness of drollness, Greg Gonzalez might be the best voice I have heard, in their self-titled debut. 

Smoky, sullen, and subtle are all words used to describe Gonzalez’s hypnotizing voice. There is not one song in Cigarettes After Sex debut that does not draw and paint upon your mind like a canvas. Gonzalez’s vocals are rich in their placidity. From “K” to “Opera House”, you just want to inch in to your headphones, to the point where they become apart of your hear, because you want to feel closer to Gonzalez’s voice. He sings with a broken sensuality like, a person eager to hold and be held, but incapable of finding the right person. Naturally, that idea gains in viewers who know the lyrics of “Each Time You Fall In Love”, “Truly”, and “Young & Dumb”. When I say “know”, I mean listeners will approach these songs and Gonzalez’s voice with a certainty; he has captured how you can fly and flail in love. Intimacy, at every level, is difficult because it involves openness, in contrast, to the ingrained, spiritual guards we carry in our everyday life. Yet, Cigarettes After Sex use cool, moody arrangements that rise like ancient, gothic instrumentals to show; if you close the door to your heart’s temple, then you lose any worth of praise. The dark religiosity of synths and keys make “Apocalypse” and “Flash” feel like, tiny churches rather than tracks: you want to go in and meditate on the worries and whims of your humanity. Such soulful dreaminess makes Cigarettes After Sex a band to sway to like one would under a magical spell. For More Information On Cigarettes After Sex And To Buy Their Debut, Cigarettes After Sex Click Here.