Cigarettes After Sex

Released June 9, 2017 via Partisan Records, Cigarettes After Sex is the record Greg Gonzalez had been circling since he started the project in El Paso in 2008. Most of it was recorded live in front of a small audience in Brooklyn in 2015, and the room is audible in every hush. It is ten slow-dance ballads played at the speed of a ceiling fan: guitars smeared in reverb until they glow, drums brushed so softly they barely register, and Gonzalez's androgynous near-whisper floating on top like smoke over a cold drink. It wears its influences in plain sight (the Angelo Badalamenti hush, the haze of Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star) and folds them into one man's bedroom at 3 a.m.

Gonzalez never lets the tempo or his voice rise. Every tempo holds, every chord lingers, and the lyrics trade in the specific: names, beaches, the lover behind "K." "Apocalypse" went double Platinum in the US on its own and became the band's signature, and "Sweet" and "Each Time You Fall in Love" press the same bruise. The album went Platinum in the US, double Platinum in France and Poland, and Gold in the UK. Every Cigarettes After Sex record since has refined this one, and none has needed to change it.

12-inch 140g black vinyl, graded Near Mint, unsealed.