Cigarettes After Sex – Cigarettes After Sex (2017)

Cigarettes After Sex is a fairly new acquaintance to me. Of course it's quite a new band to begin with. I think I heard a couple of first songs from them about a couple of years ago, but it wasn't until at teh end of last year that I really got into them. Their music is amazingly mellow ambient pop with great echoey dream pop vibes. The whole album is really mellow and quiet, so it's great for relaxing at home. There are similarities to bands like The XX or Beach House, or if we go more back in time, Mazzy Star and Slowdive. I bought this CD after I had done my top 10 list for the best albums of 2017. If I had bought it earlier, this would've probably been on my list. I really like the simple black album cover. You can't really describe this sound with illustrations. It will be interesting to see how this band's career evolves after this debut album.



I was somewhat surprised to find out that Cigarettes After Sex are from El Paso, Texas. Somehow this kind of mellow dream pop connects in my mind to winter and degrees below zero. I guess this music could also work for lazy summer days, but I just have difficulties imagining this kind of music to high temperatures.

Sometimes when I'm really tired and come home exhausted after work, I just like to lay down on the sofa and put music like this on. Then I can transcend into this hypnotic state of mind, where I'm not sure if I'm awake or asleep. This kind of music is perfect for that.

The album starts with the song called K. Although the sounds are just as mellow and echoey as on the rest of the album, this song's melody is so catchy that it kind of makes this song a hit, even though it's difficult to talk about hits from a band whose songs all kind of sound the same. I just want to point out that all the songs sounding the same is not a bad thing here, because this album is meant for a certain state of mind when you don't want to be distracted by different intensity levels. Each Time You Fall In Love sounds a bit more like post-rock, although the guitars are soft and subtle and don't have overdrive. The vocals remind me of Julee Cruise. Sunsetz is like a poppier version of some lost The XX song. It's quite incredible how Cigarettes After Sex manages to be so catchy with so lazy intensity songs. Apocalypse is carried mainly with bass and echoey vocals which gives the guitars that extra attention when they appear. Flash is one of the slowest songs on the album and I feel like this would be the perfect song to doze off to. Sweet has some excellent chiming tambourines that remind me of Mazzy Star. Opera House has some twinkling guitars well known from post-rock bands such as Explosions in the Sky, but the sounds stay very smooth. Truly has wonderfully happy melody on top of pure dream pop bliss. The album ends with Young & Dumb with some interestingly funny lyrics.

Cigarettes After Sex clearly do not want to mess the illusion of their music with any illustrations. On top of the simplistic black album cover, they don't seem to have any music videos. I guess the best thing you can do is to just close your eyes, lay on your back and enjoy the hypnotic bliss of Cigarettes After Sex.

listen to the album on Spotify.