Cigarettes After Sex is one of the biggest surprise success stories in music history.
The El Paso, Texas trio seems far more at home performing in a quirky David Lynch film than in a large sports stadium, drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Miles Davis and The Cowboys. They make lo-fi dream pop music. Junkie.
But the band’s sound is unflinchingly consistent, enough to lead the uninitiated to believe that Cigarettes After Sex actually only has one song. The song has since been performed with different lyrics and has about 34 different titles.
The upper bound for such acts has traditionally been theaters and small club headliners.
But here we are in 2024, and Cigarettes After Sex are the hottest band in rock, touring to packed houses at major basketball/hockey arenas across the country.
And the trio is every bit worthy of that once-seeming success, which just recently saw Cigarettes After Sex perform in front of a sold-out crowd of some 13,000 fans at the Oakland Arena. was highlighted by a gorgeous night of ambient pop and shoegaze-inspired indie rock. on Saturday night. This will be Cigarettes After Sex’s first Bay Area appearance since 2023, when they played a similarly entertaining set at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
Led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Greg Gonzalez, flanked on stage by bassist Randall Miller on the left and drummer Jacob Tomsky on the right, Cigarettes After Sex will perform for an 80-minute show (opening night) at exactly 9 p.m.・No act) opened the curtain. A mesmerizing version of “X’s,” the title track of the group’s latest album and the namesake of this current tour.
Greg Gonzalez leads Cigarettes After Sex in concert at Oakland Arena on October 5, 2024 (Jim Harrington, Bay Area News Group).
They cast a powerful spell on a young audience whose average age seemed to be about half the age of the 42-year-old lead singer. These fans passionately sing along to the lyrics, which are candid yet poetic about love, sex, infatuation, and various types of inebriation, and have been repeated countless times on Spotify, YouTube, and more. It became clear that they don’t just remember things, but rather instill them in their bodies. streaming platform.
The sound in the nearly 60-year-old arena was crystal clear, and the live renditions of these songs came across every penny, just like the recorded versions. As a result, it felt like we were all putting on giant headphones in unison and pressing on a really great Cigarettes After Sex playlist.
Gonzalez and his friends roll out new numbers, “You’re All I Want,” “Dark Vacay,” and “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” with the steady precision of an origami master folding up a new piece of work. Continued to build on the software. And each piece was greeted by a high-pitched wave of excitement from the young crowd, close to what you hear at an Olivia Rodrigo show. (At a Cigarettes After Sex show, you’re more likely to need ear protection for crowd noise than for the actual music.)
The stage show is suitably minimal, with the video screen showing only black-and-white (and largely unchanging) visuals of the three performers, and the lighting effects used primarily to enhance the meditative atmosphere. Ta.
The funniest visual came from the crowd, who used their cell phone flashlights to illuminate the arena like a starry sky. As they danced slowly to each other and swayed in solos as they mouthed the lyrics, fans expressed how much songs like “Tejano Blue” and “John Wayne” meant to them. , even though many of the fans probably don’t know about it. Who was John Wayne?
Crowd shines cell phone flashlights at Cigarettes After Sex concert at Oakland Arena on October 5, 2024 (Jim Harrington, Bay Area News Group).
The group performed four songs from the band’s third full-length album, X’s, released in July. One of those songs, the hypnotic “Dreams from Bunker Hill,” was performed for the first time at Saturday’s concert, giving fans bragging rights for making their live debut.
The new record is really good – good enough to be in the running for album of the year. And I’m sure Grammy voters agree, with Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short and Sweet” taking the overall Album of the Year category at the 2025 ceremony. I predict that they will put an “X” in it. .
Despite some minor tweaks here and there, the new album still boasts the classic Cigarettes After Sex ambient vibe, but overall it’s a much better album than the previous two. It feels a little less like a Twin Peaks Lost Season soundtrack.
The band still spends the most time on stage on its eponymous first album (which remains the high point of its catalogue), with six of the ten songs on that record It was shown in Auckland. These were the cuts that resonated most strongly with audiences, and when Gonzalez launched into “Sweet” and “K,” the Cigarettes After Sex mania was taken to the next level. And “Apocalypse”.
Cigarettes After Sex close out the show with another of their first albums, Opera House, leaving the audience thoroughly excited as they write the next chapter in one of the most amazing (and fulfilling) success stories in recent music history. and left the stage. .
Setlist:
1. “X”
2. “Pistol”
3. “I only want you.”
4. “Dark Vacay”
5. “It won’t hurt anything, baby.”
6. “Touch”
7. “Dream from Bunker Hill”
8. “Tejano Blue”
9. “John Wayne”
10. “Cry”
11. “Suite”
12. “Sunsets”
13. “Heavenly”
14. “K”
15. “Dreaming You”
16. “Apocalypse”
17. “Opera House”
First published: October 6, 2024 at 10:13am
