Music Review: Cigarettes After Sex – one of 2017’s most intoxicating debuts

Do one thing and do it well, as the saying goes. Ignoring their atrocious name, Cigarettes After Sex successfully follow that maxim with their stubbornly unvaried, hazy-swooning noirish slow sex jams. The Brooklyn-based dream-pop band have millions of YouTube views to show for just a handful of singles and EP tracks, including a cover of REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You. Quite an achievement for a still otherwise obscure indie band.

Equal parts Mazzy Star and The xx, their self-titled debut album is more reverb-treated shoegaze-y guitars, sighing keyboards and soft-focus vocals sung as if whispered in your ear by frontman Greg Gonzalez. His key preoccupation as a lyricist, on tracks like the sultry K and the almost uncomfortably intimate Sweet, is matters of the heart versus matters between the sheets. That plus Gonzalez’s gossamer way with a melody – case in point the ridiculously beautiful Apocalypse (“your lips my lips, apocalypse”) – make this one of the most intoxicating debuts of the year.