Cigarettes After Sex Announce Forthcoming LP ‘X’s’ and Share Lead Single

Cigarettes After Sex announces their new LP, titled X’s (due 7/12), alongside their upcoming world tour, which features shows at some of the globe’s most iconic venues like Madison Square Garden and London’s O2, with more Asia, South America, and Middle East shows to be announced at a later date.

Filled with raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slow-burn pop songs, bandleader Greg Gonzalez captures every emotion a romantic arc inspires. But where previous albums have drawn from an amalgam of relationships, for the most part, X’s centralizes on just one relationship that spanned four years. “The record feels brutal,” admits Gonzalez. “I could sit and talk about this loss to someone, but that wouldn’t scratch the surface. I have to really write about it, sing about it, have the music, and then I can start to analyze and learn from it. Or just relive it—in a good way. I don’t have that Eternal Sunshine thing of wanting to forget.”

Gonzalez talks about musical influences:

“I grew up in El Paso & Tejano music is huge there. You could go to a lot of the bars in the city & hear artists like Selena, Los Ángeles Azules & La Mafia playing over the speakers. It was in the atmosphere around me back then, but I always rejected it & gravitated towards anything else I was attracted to really.”

The record’s first single, “Tejano Blue,” is also out now. It’s a nod to the music of bandleader Greg Gonzalez’s Texas childhood, resulting in the most instantly memorable version (and liveliest tempo) yet of the band’s signature sensual, timeless love songs.

“Years later when I was living in New York City I finally started listening to Selena’s ‘Como La Flor’ at the same time that I was also listening to a lot of Cocteau Twins. I had the idea then to try to combine both of their sounds somehow, which felt a bit strange, but also felt like it was coming from a genuine place of rediscovering & finally connecting with the music that I heard around me in my youth.”

“Tejano Blue” is available today via All DSPs, and Cigarettes After Sex’s new LP, X’s, is out July 12th via Partisan Records.

Cigarettes After Sex ‘X’s’ album artwork