If there’s one thing Cigarettes After Sex is not trying to do, it’s reinvent the wheel. Greg Gonzalez is perfectly fine perfecting a single mood—and it's one of late-night longing, slow motion reverie, and lyrics so specific they border on a diary entry. And maybe a little porn.
The band’s second album Cry is another hushed, cinematic glide through desire, heartbreak, and erotic nostalgia. But don’t mistake sonic consistency for creative stasis. Gonzalez has been tweaking this atmosphere for over a decade now, working with the precision of a director—not a bandleader.
“Location is a character in the music,” he says. The first EP was recorded in a university stairwell. “I’d walk through it on my way to class, talking with friends, and our voices would just echo like crazy,” he says. “One day I thought: this is it. Let’s just record here.”
That impulse—record where it feels right, not where it looks professional—has stuck with him. “Recording in a studio felt like going to an office,” Gonzalez says. “It didn’t feel intimate.” Cry was recorded in a house by the sea, often outdoors, sometimes at 1 a.m. while a storm rolled in. “You’d hear thunder building in the background,” he remembers. “Then suddenly, we’re sprinting all the gear inside before it gets soaked.”
Still, the sound stayed true: dreamy, down-tempo, whisper-sung lullabies for the lovesick and oversexed. Asked why the second record sounds so much like the first, Gonzalez doesn’t flinch. “I always imagined Cigarettes being more like Rothko or Cocteau Twins,” he says. “Not shape-shifting. Just deepening.”
He’s not trying to be Bowie. He’s trying to be a vibe.
And it’s a very specific vibe: slow as molasses, soaked in reverb, dangerously close to ASMR, and unmistakably horny. His lyrics reference animated Japanese porn (“Hentai”), emotional wreckage, and moments so personal they sound fictional—until they aren’t.
“Once I started writing more personal lyrics, it just felt more powerful,” he says. “It gave me a place to get feelings out that I didn’t even know I had.” He used to write in a more cryptic, impressionistic style. “But it didn’t do as much,” he shrugs. “Now, it’s all about telling a story. The more specific, the better.”
On Cry, Gonzalez manages to channel this raw intimacy into two unlikely sources: Selena and Shania Twain. “I didn’t get into them in high school,” he admits. “I was trying to be cool back then. But when I moved to New York, I started to revisit that music—and something just hit.”
He’s quick to defend it. “People act like 90s country is still off-limits,” he says. “But come on. We all know the words to Brooks & Dunn.” It’s not a joke. Cry includes two songs inspired by these artists: “Falling in Love,” which he calls his “90s country moment,” and “Kiss It Off Me,” which nods to Selena’s “Como La Flor.” The Shania influence? Direct. “I wanted to write something that felt like ‘You’re Still the One,’ but through my lens.”
Yes, the man behind the slowest makeout jams of the last ten years also listens to Master of Puppets and thinks about scoring films. “The way I write already feels cinematic,” he says. “The goal is to eventually do soundtracks—or maybe even act.” He lives in L.A. now, so it’s not just talk.
It’s part of the long-term plan: keep Cigarettes After Sex pure and unbroken, then go weird on the side. “It’s like Johnny Greenwood,” Gonzalez says. “He can be in Radiohead, but also do his whole composer thing.”
There’s a quiet confidence to all of it, like someone who figured out early that he wasn’t trying to please everyone—just the people who get it. And once you’re in the Cigarettes world, you’re in deep. You hear the thunder. You feel the stairwell. You understand how even a reference to hentai can feel romantic.
The intimacy isn’t just in the lyrics—it’s baked into every part of the process. Even his vocal takes are raw and unpolished. “I sing it once or twice, then move on,” he says. “I don’t want to overthink it.”
And when asked if he ever holds back—if there’s anything too personal to say—he shakes it off. “I just put it in,” he says. “If it gets me in trouble later, I’ll deal with that then.”
So far, no one’s complaining.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the tracks below.
