Cigarettes After Sex

X's Biography

Ten years ago Greg Gonzalez was having a really rough Valentine’s Day. Freshly heartbroken with no hope of reconciliation, he spent two hours driving from his hometown El Paso to play a show, and he listened to Sade’s “By Your Side” on repeat both ways. “The experience that day stuck in my bones—it was an idea that I couldn’t forget,” says Gonzalez, the frontman of Cigarettes After Sex. “I thought, how do I make a record that feels like that?”

With each record—the initial 2012 EP, 2017’s eponymous debut album, and 2019’s Cry— Gonzalez has been faithful to his muse: love. In raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slowburn pop songs, Gonzalez captures every emotion a romantic arc inspires. But where previous albums have drawn from an amalgam of relationships, for the most part, their third, eagerly anticipated LP, X’s, centralizes on just one relationship that spanned four years.

“The record feels brutal, honestly,” admits Gonzalez. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyze and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine-thing of wanting to forget.