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Review: 'CIGARETTES AFTER SEX'
'Cigarettes After Sex'   

-  Label: 'Partisan Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '9th June 2017'

Our Rating:
Swoon! I think I'm in love!

If this Brooklyn-based band's eye-catching name conjures up the image of tight-jeaned cock-rockers strutting their stuff, then think again.

The ambient-pop songs of Cigarettes After Sex (CAS) are akin to the difference between tasteful erotica and exploitative porn. This is music that gently envelopes you like a warm embrace.

It takes great discipline, not to say enormous self confidence, to convincingly sustain a dreamy mood like this without sounding contrived or tediously self indulgent.

CAS originally made waves when they redefined REO Speedwagon's tacky power ballad 'Keep On Loving You', managing to make the cheesy lyrics seem like a sincere declaration of devotion. The viral online response to this and the single Affection immediately transformed an unknown quantity into a cult phenomenon.

'Cinematic' has to be one of the most over used words in music writing but the Lynchian strains of their music means that, for once, this adjective is accurate.

Singer, and group mastermind, Greg Gonzalez actually used to manage a Beekman cinema on Manhattan's Upper East Side and lists among his favourite movies Antonioni's L'Avventura and Kieslowski's 'The Double Life Of Veronique'.   

As a cinephile, there's a knowing irony to a line like "Filming helicopters crashing in the ocean from way above" on Apocalypse and in the way he puts down a philanderer as living like John Wayne.

In search of the hazy glow of celluloid heroes, the single Each Time You Fall In Love was recorded on the stairway of the Beekman theatre.

The remaining tracks were mostly completed in three days in a more conventional studio space. The brevity of the recording process is particularly impressive as the lush sonic textures they achieve are those a lesser band would spend years trying to perfect.

The ten songs are divinely sexy, sometimes explicitly so, but they do not convey the brash boastfulness that epitomizes mainstream rap and roll. Gonzalez calls them grown up lullabies.

The opener, K, short for Kristen, is a gorgeous tune about what happens when friends becomes lovers and exposes the delusion that for one, or both, there can ever be "no strings attached".

In contrast, and with stark directness, the final track - Young & Dumb - is dedicated to the "patron saint of sucking cock".

An illustration of the way Gonsalez understands the line between crude lust and romantic desire can be found on Sweet. In this song he confesses to being a repeat viewer (voyeur!) of a video of his lingerie-wearing woman and declares "You know that I'm obsessed with your body". Despite this, the mood still manages to be sensual, not pervy. Eat your heart out Ed Sheeran!

Having built the hype, the challenge faced by CAS, five years on from their debut EP, was to maintain the momentum via this full length work.

Their self titled debut album does so, effortlessly and in spades.

Prepare to be smitten!

Cigarettes After Sex's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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CIGARETTES AFTER SEX - Cigarettes After Sex