Drawn to the bizarre reverberation created in an echoey space, El Paso band Cigarettes After Sex recorded its first extended play in a university stairway. The resulting sound? One that evokes the image of cigarette smoke drifting through a dimly-lit room, anything reminiscent of a nouvelle vague, or French New Wave, film. For four years, frontman and founder Greg Gonzalez led the band’s sound through several iterations, beginning in 2008 with a sound that strove to emulate Madonna’s 1980s singles, synth-pop duo Erasure, and ‘80s rock band New Order. Gonzalez’ style would “harken back to darker influences such as Joy Division,” a 1970s English rock band, according to the First Avenue website. After experimenting with darker, melancholic sounds influenced by another English rock band, the Smiths, the band finally found its trademark sound. Their secret: lyrics that had a universal appeal and, of course, a four-story University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) stairway. And as ridiculous as stairway studio sessions seem, this technique remains the band’s primary method to creating the subdued, hypnotic sound they are known for.
Image caption: Greg Gonzalez (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Gonzalez always had an ear for British rock and an appreciation for European films. In a 2017 interview with Eloise Blondiau, Gonzalez explained that his father worked as a video retailer, resulting in an entire library of VHS tapes surrounding young Gonzalez and inspiring his creative endeavors even into adulthood. Gonzalez studied music at UTEP and started Cigarettes After Sex (often referred to simply as “Cigarettes”) in 2008. The band underwent several iterations by 2012, the year in which Gonzalez recorded the first extended play, I., unconventionally, in a UTEP stairway.
In a 2020 Financial Times article by Michael Hann, Gonzalez said it “sounded like you had entered the heavens or something, it was so cosmic-sounding.” If you’ve ever listened to I., you know the sounds are nothing short of seductive and soothing, something you might hear late at night, seeping from the speakers in a strange and hazy cinema. This marked the beginning of what might be labeled the band’s trademark stairway sound. Three years following the creation of I., the track “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Babe” exploded on YouTube, and the band gained an international audience almost overnight. Cigarettes struggled to follow the attention gained from this track and didn’t reignite the enthusiasm of their significant internet fan base until the release of the 2015 single “Affection.”
After the big break in 2015, Gonzalez dropped out of school and relocated to Brooklyn, New York, and the band gained Jacob Tomsky on drums and Randall Miller on bass, with electric guitarist and keyboardist Phillip Tubbs from El Paso. In New York, Gonzalez managed the Beekman Theatre while often performing live throughout the local music scene. In the interview with Blondiau, Gonzalez stated that he focused on songwriting during this time and drew inspiration from the change in scenery, specifically from the snow, which has the potential to stun and inspire anyone raised in the desert.
In a 2017 Music Week article, Ben Homewood explained that a friend of bassist Randall Miller went to see the band at the now defunct Fantana’s in New York’s Lower East Side in September 2015. Instantly blown away by their alluring sound, specifically by Gonzalez’ “androgynous” vocals, Ed Harris became the band’s official manager. At the time, Cigarettes’ internet hit “Nothing Gonna Hurt You Baby” had 500- to 600,000 views on YouTube. In Homewood’s interview, Harris stated, “We knew how to roll out the music. There was organic growth and we wanted to keep it as pure as possible.” With Harris’ help, the band signed a deal with Partisan Records, an independent record label. Partisan managing director Zena White explained that “the band had been growing their fanbase organically, so we wanted to put in more traditional distribution, sales and marketing to elevate that.” The label intended to aid the band to further musical success rather than micromanage them. White explained that “the secret is constant communication, empowering the band and not taking them down a different road.” Two years later, in August of 2017, Blue Raincoat Music signed the band and manager Harris. In a Homewood interview, the band expressed that by 2017, they had put on “111 shows, in 36 countries, over 5 continents.” Envision a couple of easygoing indie-loving college students packed in a university stairway, recording live, originally-written songs and aspiring for musical stardom. Almost a decade after recording I., Cigarettes toured many countries, including Poland, Brazil and India. Talk about climbing the heavenly stairway to success!
Image caption: Cigarettes After Sex – Southside (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
University stairways are becoming the new recording studio, at least for Cigarettes. The sound achieved through this recording approach is something much more intimate, which is what the band seeks to capture. Cigarettes is known for its unique, sometimes undefinable sound. Gonzalez replied to Knar Bedian in a 2017 interview, “Sleazy-sweet, hazy romantic ballads,” when asked to describe his music without using genre names. Of course, a considerable factor contributing to the unique sound is the recording process. Gonzalez stated in the interview with Bedian that he wants to maintain a “spontaneous approach” to recording his music, involving recording songs as they’re played live. Gonzalez explained that “with this sort of process, the locations of the recordings are really crucial.”
Cigarettes is known for taking recording sessions to unconventional places. This unusual approach captures the raw emotion that the band strives to convey. Gonzalez continued in the interview saying, “The way a room sounds fully affects the arrangement we devise for a song and also gives the recording its feeling and mood.” Influenced by The Trinity Session, an album by The Cowboy Junkies recorded in a church using a single microphone, Cigarettes recorded most of their album Cigarettes After Sex at Bushwick, the Sweatshop Rehearsal space. They recorded the song “Each Time You Fall in Love” in the Beekman Theatre’s stairway, indicative of Gonzalez’ fondness for the ethereal, dream-like sound acquired in such a space. The “stairway sound” achieves visceral emotion and impacts listeners in a way studio-recorded music doesn’t.
An inspiration behind Gonzalez’ storytelling through music comes from his love for film. In the interview with Bedian, the frontman explained that two films, in particular, have influenced his work: Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 Italian film L’Avventura, for its “strange, erotic, and deeply romantic feel,” and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique, which Gonzalez claims was influential in the “feel and sound” of “Affection” and the new LP, Cigarettes After Sex. Gonzalez claimed that he had “been obsessed with film since I was a little kid.…I wanted to transmit whatever feelings that I was getting from my favorite films and whatever moods I really liked and somehow get that across in the music since I wasn’t a filmmaker.”
Blondiau agreed that everything about the band epitomizes a French New Wave aura, rejecting traditional conventions and thus embracing experimentation. He wrote, “The name of his band alone evokes the gauzy smoke, smudged eyeliner, and crumpled bedsheets of a French New Wave film, and the LP’s [Cigarettes After Sex] striking black-and-white album art could easily moonlight as a movie poster.” As Blondiau claims, even Cigarettes’ album covers evoke a nouvelle vague appeal with its simplistic, monochromatic and vintage look, analogous with the moods expressed in their music.
For their first two releases, Cigarettes’ album artwork was created by American visual artist Man Ray, who embraced the style described above. German photographer Resa Rot captured the photo Cigarettes used for their cover for the single “K.” The band’s ability to tie multiple mediums of artistic expressions, such as film, literature, photography and fine art points to their imaginative style.
Gonzalez’ desire to “pull back the covers on life’s more intimate issues,” as Paul Moody put it in his 2019 article on the Another Man website, stems from his upbringing in El Paso and his early exposure to European cinema. The sometimes bleak and even erotic lyrics of Cigarettes’ music point to the band’s appeal for the authenticities of life. What listeners appreciate about Cigarettes’ music is its ability to capture the unrefined feelings we all experience through melody and words. Infused with strange and suggestive emotion, Gonzalez’ songs tell stories with themes from infatuation and affection to pain and frustration, some interspersed with Gonzalez’ memories. “Sunsetz,” for example, was inspired by the memory of Gonzalez glancing in his rearview mirror and seeing his ex-girlfriend wave to him as he drove away from her home in El Paso. “The sunlight on your face in my rear view” describes a very particular scene, which is something Gonzalez likes to use in his songwriting. In a 2017 YouTube FaceCulture channel interview, he explained that he feels authentic settings allow listeners to experience a raw emotion associated with a place, “sitting down in a restaurant in the lower east side or living room, you know. It’s like all these settings are kind of present and I think that’s…definitely a big film influence.”
Although the band underwent several changes through the years –– from losing members, such as keyboardist Phillip Tubbs, drummer Greg Leah, keyboardist Steve Herrada and guitarist Emily Davis, to gaining new ones –– their sole aim has always been to connect with listeners. In the interview with Blondiau, Gonzalez added, “We’ll play shows and the whole crowd is singing like a big sing- along — which is awesome — or the crowd is just in this dreamy trance- like state, or people are dancing. I like that the music can fit into all of these categories, that it can provide all these different outlets of expression for the listener. It can help somebody sleep or they can sing or they can dance to it. I think that’s great.” Their music transcends borders as their fan base consists of people from vastly different ethnic backgrounds, a result of their internet beginnings and Gonzalez’ appreciation of music from other cultures. He asserts that his music embodies a simplicity accessible to people from all different walks of life.
In the Homewood interview, Gonzalez talked about a time when the band’s music positively impacted a listener: “I met a couple in their 40s and they greeted me with tears…. They had lost a friend in a car accident and they said our music had been helpful to them. It was really special.” Not only does Gonzalez’ music help listeners cope with loss, but it’s cathartic for the frontman himself. In the Face Culture interview, Gonzalez shared that his songwriting is a way for him to work through his experiences and share them with others.
Cigarettes’ unconventional beginnings suggest their style of challenging the status quo and embracing creative ex- pression in its most unusual forms. Their success is rooted in authenticity and their desire to stay true to their origins, to let inspiration drive their success, just as it did in 2012 with their first extended play record. Their ability to reach listeners at a global scale says something about their El Paso-based organic style. They may have left El Paso, but El Paso’s influence will never leave them.
If you happen to be walking up or down a stairway, keep an ear out for the smooth melody of a bass and a couple of indie-sounding vocalists. Who knows, you might casually encounter the next up-and-coming worldwide sensation, a group of locally-grown El Paso musicians on the stairway to heavenly success.
Image caption: Greg Gonzalez (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
tags: Biography
