That marriage of sound and setting is the heart and soul of Cry, Cigarettes After Sex’s riveting sophomore album. Recorded in a stunning house on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the collection reflects the uneasy beauty, erotic longing, and stark minimalism of the space, all smooth lines and soft light. While the music seemed to pour from Gonzalez all at once, it would be nearly two years before he would finally attempt to match those performances with lyrics, and the result is a collection of songs that toy with time as a linear notion, a dreamy meditation on sex and romance that merges the past and present into a slow, reverb-soaked swirl.
Where the band’s debut had drawn heavily on the romantic pop music of the late 50’s and early 60’s, this time around, Gonzalez wanted to push into more unexpected territory. Clocking in at nine songs, Cry is a compact collection, but its brevity belies its depth. Gonzalez writes with a filmmaker’s eye, capturing tiny moments with a rich, cinematic detail that locates the profound within the mundane.
