For every old soul that thinks shuffling out to a concert on a Monday night is an absolute drag in a world where Netflix and hot cocoa exist, brace yourselves: Cigarettes After Sex offer the exact aesthetic je ne sais quoi that’s worth leaving a mid-fall pillow fort for. And they play Brighton Music Hall Monday night (October 9).
“We’ll play shows and the whole crowd is singing like a big sing-a-long—which is awesome—or the crowd is just in this dreamy trance-like state, or people are dancing,” singer Greg Gonzalez tells Interview Magazine. “I like that the music can fit into all those categories, that it can provide all these different outlets of expression for the listener. It can help somebody sleep or they can sing or they can dance to it.”
To paint a richer picture, simply dissect Cigarettes After Sex’s song “K” — or any song, really — from from the Texas-based ambient pop duo’s recently-released self-titled album (via Partisan Records). The track begins with and goes through the exact emotional phases of receiving an ungodly one-letter text, starting with slow dread and slipping into spaced-out, languid realization. The tune casts a bit of a sentimental maelstrom, all while Gonzalez’s vocals stir the rhythm gently. He quickly follows up the quasi-mopey conviction on the next track, “Each Time You Fall in Love.”
“Each time you fall in love/It’s clearly not enough,” he coos to open the song, then repeats the line in the second verse. You could say the entire record is a bummer, but what’s far more accurate is to say that it’s actually painfully relatable, yet oddly soothing.
Even T. Swift, the face of millennial dating, agrees.
Featured photo by Ebru Yildiz, courtesy of Tell All Your Friends PR.