Cigarettes After Sex ★★★
X’s
PARTISAN. CD/DL/LP
Third album from Texan band whose name doesn’t get any less ick.
Slowly, and by stealth, Cigarettes After Sex have grown quietly massive, filling arenas from the O2 to Madison Square Garden – a staggering, if slightly baffling achievement for a dreampop band who trade in hushed, largely dynamic-free music, like a drugged-out version of The xx. Inspired by a heartbroken drive undertaken by singer Greg Gonzalez while listening to Sade’s 2000 track By Your Side, X’s refines the formula, the result being slow-burn intimacy with a hedonistic edge. “We wanted to fuck like all the time,” Gonzalez overshares in Tejano Blue, while Dark Vacay details a holiday spent “on pills and lines… sipping Château Lafite Rothschild”. There are gothy antecedents here – Baby Blue Movie sounds like the ’80s Cure over-medicated in the Hollywood Hills – and if it sustains a certain moodiness, X’s adheres to a tonally one-note atmosphere.