Cry

A band world-building effectively is a rare thing; Cigarettes After Sex have created a monochromatic, slow-motion universe of loss, love, hope, sex, and devotion that reaches new heights on this sophomore statement.

Cigarettes After Sex – if you prefer melody and softness to rhythm and abrasion – are one of the most sonically pleasurable groups of recent years. These are sturdily constructed songs, which would work in other arrangements, and they are presented in such a way that the instrumentation ornaments rather than overwhelms them. ... His writing still reads like that of a man who doesn’t have a filter – not in a good way.

As with their debut, this album feels as though you’re being allowed a brief but intense insight into his self-contained world. Yet the vein of humour that ran through those earlier songs has been replaced by a deeper sincerity.

Cry is pure from beginning to end and is a pleasant second instalment from the Texas three-piece.

Almost everything here sounds pre-designed for drone-shot driving sequences in a slow-burning indie film, but in a very good way. [Dec 2019, p.86]

Misery and heartache added a much more interesting layer to these songs the first time around, but it all still works. Formulaic though they might now seem, the quartet's reverb-drenched songs of lust and longing still beguile, and on Cry, that sultry voice continues to be a ravishingly beautiful thing to behold.