Album Review: Cigarettes After Sex - Cry

“The sound of this record is completely tied to the location for me,” frontman Greg Gonzalez says of the highly anticipated follow-up LP from Cigarettes After Sex. “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 and sexuality. It’s a very personal telling of what those things mean to me.”

Press play on the record, imagine yourself in that location, and it begins to make sense. Imagine stolen glances over your morning coffee, walking down a beach going nowhere slowly, tracing outlines on naked skin. Imagine lighting that post-coital cigarette, watching it burn, watching the now empty space in the bed beside you.

There’s a biological basis to music and Gonzalez’ lyrics cut right to the humanness of it all on Cry. With more of the same stargazing ennui as their debut, a more cynical listener might dismiss his longing as typical softboi antics. Surrender to your inner romantic though and you’ll find nine tracks that have you missing someone whether you know them or not. 

Sonically, it’s the same slow, atmospheric mix that leaves you floating on ambient bass lines and soft melodies. It smudges together, like colours on an oil painting, the album more a mood board, evoking a time and place, than a collection of songs.