GREG GONZALEZ of CIGARETTES AFTER SEX: Music, The Great Healer
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
They are the band with the name that you just can’t forget, just like their music Cigarettes After Sex conjures up visions of romantic interludes interlaced with a sharp noir edge. Formed in El Paso, Texas in 2008 lead vocalist Greg Gonzalez – the man with the androgynous voice – later relocated to Brooklyn, New York where the band released their single ‘Affection’ in 2015. Bringing to life the dream that all bands have of being discovered, Cigarettes After Sex quickly gained notoriety in musical circles after gaining millions of hits on YouTube through ‘music recommendations’. This then lead to the band performing live across Europe, Asia and the US before finally releasing their self-titled debut album in June of this year.
Cigarettes After Sex are a band to get lost to, the music is languid like a hot summers afternoon in the city, Gonzalez’s voice the sweet tang of a dash of lime in an iced beverage that you cannot help but savour with each and every sip. With influences such as the Cocteau Twins, Miles Davis and Julee Cruise influencing the making of the album it is of little wonder that Cigarettes After Sex are on the lips of all those in the know. Performing in New Zealand for the first time at Auckland’s Powerstation next month, this will be one show that you will want to circle on the gig calendar and underline in red!
I recently spoke with Greg Gonzalez about the debut album, his early influences and his views on music having the power to heal;
I love the fact that you use music as medicine and that you are a strong believer in musical therapy; did that develop with you organically?
“Yeah luckily for me I guess I just sided with music and I would write as a kind of therapy. Also when I was going through really rough emotional times, you know when I was going through extraordinary anxiety or times of great distress, there just seemed to be certain records that I could put on and those records for whatever reason would really calm me and act as a sort of medicine and you know would lull me to sleep or calm me down and things like that.
I think I started to notice at that point there was something to it, it wasn’t just you know this kind of notion; music therapy does really exist and later on I read more about it being used, that music therapy is this kind of whole other thing and it expands, there is a deeper kind of studies on it and deeper uses for it, it’s really interesting.”
Now early influences – what got you started on the musical path?
“Yeah for me I started young, I think I was born the year that Thriller came out and pretty much Michael Jackson became like this immediate idol, and I wanted to be a performer; just sing and perform and just seeing everything that he was doing and his music and so I was bitten very, very young, like I must have been just a few years old or something when I got that first bug.
Years later I got a guitar and I just had a natural inclination to want to write pretty much; it was like the first thing I did when I got a guitar was to start writing songs! It was basically the most natural thing, it was compulsive, it wasn’t like I kind of decided to play guitar, I just played guitar and took to it immediately and that was it”
I understand that you are quite the avid film fan, out of interest what would be one of your favourites and what would be one of your favourite soundtracks or composers?
“Oh I actually love Hans Zimmer he is a great composer; going back to the music therapy thing it’s actually interesting, my favourite film composer is Ennio Morricone he actually has this compilation called ‘Ennio Morricone with Love’. It’s a bunch of his romantic scores put together and that was a record as well that would always lull me to sleep and kind of take the anxiety away; it’s funny it kind of works for both things, it’s a record that I put on during times of great distress and it also happens to be one of my favourite composers … he was extremely inventive and extremely melodic and very eclectic and pretty much did everything as a music composer”
I am quite the fan of Danny Elfman myself …
“Elfman is kinda the first composer that I really thought ‘This is a composer!’ – so he was like my introduction to film composition, like ‘Oh, this is what a composer does!’
You know I loved Beetlejuice as a kid and I loved Edward Scissorhands and just like ‘Wow, this guy is making amazing scores’, really melodic and really distinctive and he still remains one of the best I think when you look at those early scores by him.”
Lyrically your songs write bold and resilient stories; I note that you write in the style of a memoir which is often poetic and speaks of someone who is not only a fierce lyricist but an avid reader as well; so may I ask do you have a favourite author?
“I feel like I took a lot from Richard Brautigan near to the point where Brautigan is in the lyrics to ‘Sunsetz’ on this LP. I read a lot of his books which I liked, but mostly his poetry was really influential on the lyrics. If you read Brautigans poetry especially, he has a book called ‘The Pill Versus The Springhill Mine Disaster’ and they’re just very short poems that are a bit surreal at times and kind of strange but he also has these poems that are very romantic, blunt sexually and have a sweetness to them I think. I love seeing that in his writing and I didn’t feel like I was seeing that anywhere else and it was something that I really identified with to the point where you could say kind of vulgar things but they were also said in kind of a sweet way. There was sweetness to them, there was a romance to saying something very sexually blunt and Brautigans stuff would have that, especially his poetry like I said.”
Now let’s talk about the new album; really loving the track ‘Each Time You Fall In Love’ because I am quite an avid film fan myself. I can picture many scenes and films that track would fit right into. So what’s the story behind the song?
“That song’s a newer song, I think it’s one of the rare songs – it’s more a bit jaded and a lot of the songs on the record were written before last year but that one, it’s a bit newer, it was written last year.
That song was just kind of saying … I had gone through these periods of love and gone through like these relationships, but that song is about seeing all the different people and you’re wondering … you keep falling in love with different people and you’re wondering when it’s finally gonna sink in. When are you gonna be with one person instead of floating around aimlessly; you know different people kinda searching for something to happen. So it’s a very kinda questioning song, wondering what does this all amount to, like what is the search going to amount to in that moment.”
What is the one song that sums up Cigarettes After Sex?
“I think you get it with ‘Sweet’, honestly, I think ‘Sweet’ does everything that the band does, it’s a very positive song and the imagery is taken from … it’s autobiographical in the sense that it’s taken from a relationship that I had. So the details are there you know, a song about romance with details that are more sexual than you might get in other ones.
Then at the core of the song you have a very … the philosophical message in the middle is that you are with someone and you don’t care if they … you don’t mind if they hurt you because you just want to be with them, like you are just willing to take the chance that you might get hurt just because it’s worth it for what might come of it.
So I think ‘Sweet’ kinda functions in that way it gives you all of the kind of many things you get from Cigarettes After Sex”
Speaking to you – you have a very lower octave voice
[laughs]
… and yet when you sing you of course sing in a much higher register. Now your voice has been described by many as androgynous; is that your natural singing voice – or did you aim it more towards being androgynous to fit in with the sound of your music?
“I think it became my main singing voice, I didn’t have to do much to kinda get to this, it’s kinda this whispery voice, my voice becomes that, it becomes that when I start whispering. I have this kinda whispery sound that’s definitely my voice, it just happens to be … you know this bedroom voice [laughs] it’s the best way I can describe it, whispery bedroom kinda feeling.
But a lot of people say it’s androgynous because I love female singers’ more than male singers for the most part and I feel like I’m imitating the female singers. I have a long list of female singers that I love vs male singers”
There is a strong similarity to all of the songs on the album; was it produced as a linear record?
“I think it could be definitely shuffled, it does have a good running order but I think you can put it in any order and its fine, you can shuffle it and it totally, totally works. And that was very deliberate; as far as the records that I love, most are usually very cohesive. A record like ‘Kind of Blue’ or ‘Music for Airports’ all these kinds of records that had this one feeling that you could only get from that record.
I wanted our stuff to have that, where you’re not looking for eclecticism, you’re not looking for all these different things, you just kind of want to sink into this one sound and see how deep you can go.”
The reason I asked – the song at the end, entitled ‘Young and Dumb’ is quite biting; was that a deliberate move to place it at the end of the album after all these rather sweet songs?
[laughs] “Yeah that was one where it just felt like a good little send off, it was one of the more musical ones where the end of it is just instrumental and it kind of sends you off into the sunset you know, like the end credits of a movie. It’s also the one, the song that’s the most … it’s a little deceptive I think because it was meant to be, it’s a sweet song in my mind but it’s coming from a strange place where you can’t necessarily get that right away.
The words in it sound scathing, but it’s scathing in the way that you would kid around with; if you have a lover, and you assume you are together and you can kind of make fun of each other and you say these things together and it’s coming from that place where it’s not serious it’s like a … you tease one another, if you have a relationship in which humour is a big factor it’s a good relationship, so that’s kinda what that song is doing.”
Obviously you guys are heading to New Zealand next month – have you ever been here before in any capacity?
“No, we’re really excited to be able to come down. It’s going to be a first time for all of us.”
What can fans expect from your show? Will you be having the accompanying back screen visuals that you often feature?
“We try to keep it very pure as far as the show we’re doing; if you like the record we present a very faithful version of the record and we don’t do a lot of fancy stuff with it at all. We might have some sort of visual elements, you know sort of old films and things like that around the kind of set and mood but that’s about it. It’s a very simple thing, very simple set–up.”
Cigarettes After Sex are hitting Auckland’s Powerstation on the 8th January for what promises to be a very special show. Tickets are still available from Ticketmaster but get in quick as they are selling fast!
