Concert Review: Cigarettes After Sex Play To Love In Park Church Co-op

It is very unusual, as a Catholic, to come to church where there is a cash bar, and a band named Cigarettes After Sex (CAS)  singing about sex. With Jesus behind, CAS crooned songs form their self-titled debut, that were all about wanting to be touched by and touch back your lover. The dynamic of playing into everything that is deemed “sinful” brought about a re-thinking of how we define sin. 

As I saw the crowd pack in, and wondered when was the last time any of us came to pray, I marveled the irony of our presence in God’s temple. I had seen Hand Habits perform, and absorbed the spiritual turmoils of her music being played in a place where people come to relieve or blame their inner pain. Yet, Cigarettes After Sex are all about the pain and power that comes through the art of sex. Playing off their debut album, the crowd looker forward, and watch them like one would a flying firefly; you dreamily gaze at the random, natural beauty before you. Gonzalez voice is the same live as it is on record. It is smooth, pure, and clear like milk, but CAS lyrics are the warm honey that is poured in to assure their music is not just another “glass of milk”. If you listen to CAS, then you want to feel. Their music plays into the spiritual reverberations of having your boyfriend kiss your neck or your wife hold you in her arms, while feeling a soulful connection as deep as the ocean and as high as Mt. Everest.  Tracks such as “Sweet”, “Affection”, and “Apocalypse” trickled through the ambiance as if music was caressing air. Meanwhile,  CAS remained still. They did not need to do anything, but play, which the night feel as if the crowd was a human ipod that God had clicked on, and Cigarettes After Sex was the shuffled choice. It was unexpected, yet amazingly cool to hear band sing to the most intimate, and if consented, lovely act a pair human beings could commit.

Spiritual and physical connection do matter to each other, and it was interesting to see how CAS emanated that truth compared to their last show. When I saw them at MHOW, they had war-torn images that intertwined with softness of their sound to create an imaginative contrast. Love can tear you apart, but at Park Church Co-op, love was about uniting. For More Information On Cigarettes After Sex Click Here.