Cigarettes After Sex

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Ebru Yildiz

Cigarettes After Sex

Like the somber soundtrack to your ragtag high-school diary or a late-night, post-first-date drive on a deserted highway, Greg Gonzalez’s low-fi ambient pop experience captures both the joy and existential angst of modern romance. This may be one of The Sylvee’s most unusual shows, as several thousand people will likely engage in bouts of simultaneous swaying and head-bobbing.

$25 ($22 adv.).

press release: Cigarettes After Sex will return with their anticipated sophomore album - Cry - on October 25 via Partisan Records. Recorded during night time sessions in a mansion on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the album is a lush, cinematic meditation on the many complex facets of love - meeting, wanting, needing, losing...sometimes all at once. Listen to album highlight “Heavenly” now.

Earlier today, “Heavenly” was featured as Annie Mac’s ‘Hottest Record’ on her BBC Radio 1 show, and also had a first play on Sirius XMU in the US. Frontman/guitarist Greg Gonzalez describes the song as “inspired by the overwhelming beauty I felt watching an endless sunset on a secluded beach in Latvia one summer night...”

After decamping to Mallorca the same week that their self-titled minimalist pop masterwork debut was released in 2017, Gonzalez and his bandmates - Jacob Tomsky (drums) & Randy Miller (bass) - consciously let the striking location guide the initial ‘Cry’ sessions. “The sound of this record is completely tied to the location for me,” Gonzalez explains. “Ultimately, I view this record as a film. It was shot in this stunning, exotic location, and it stitches all these different characters and scenes together, but in the end is really about romance, beauty & sexuality. It’s a very personal telling of what those things mean to me.”

While the music came quickly – often improvised on the spot – it would be another two years before Gonzalez would attempt to complete the accompanying lyrics. Helped by the burgeoning love of a new relationship, the influence of films by Éric Rohmer, and the songs of Selena and Shania Twain among others, ‘Cry’ blends the carnal subtlety of their debut with a warmer palette. The album was self-produced and engineered by Gonzalez, and mixed by Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

The band will tour extensively behind ‘Cry.’ They’ve confirmed a global headline tour this fall which has already begun to sell out. That run includes stops at The Wiltern (Oct 3) in LA, and Brooklyn Steel (Oct 24) + Webster Hall (Oct 23) in NYC. Full routing below, more dates to be announced soon.

Cigarettes After Sex’s self-titled debut has sold over 550k records to date (streaming equivalent), amassing over 360 million Spotify streams, 2.2 million monthly listeners, and 350 million YouTube streams. The band’s list of on-the-record fans include everyone from Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Lana Del Rey, Françoise Hardy, Lily Allen, Busy Philipps + more. They’ve been featured in Vice Noisey, V Magazine, Interview, NPR’s Tiny Desk, and their music has appeared in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ ‘Killing Eve,’ and Ralph Lauren ads.