Live in the Stadthalle

Cigarettes After Sex: Born for the fall

Good day, brother melancholy: Cigarettes After Sex frontman Greg Gonzalez in his melancholy habitat.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Eight years ago, they were still playing in the living room atmosphere of the Gürtellokal B72 - on Sunday evening, Cigarettes After Sex filled the Wiener Stadthalle to capacity with 14,000 fans. The "Krone" took a look at what drives an entire generation to the melancholy songs of the slowcore/shoegaze Texans.

No band in the world fits the hazy November mood better than Cigarettes After Sex. The Texan trio with a penchant for melancholy and sweeping melancholy love to present themselves here in the depths of autumn. 2016 at the ppc in Graz, 2017 at "Ahoy! Pop" in Linz's Posthof, twice in the Vienna Arena in 2019, last year in the Gasometer and today in the Wiener Stadthalle. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to notice that the band's career ascent has been a steady but gentle rocket ride. When the band sang gloomy hymns about the strawberry fields at the brilliantly curated but unfortunately short-lived "Out Of The Woods" festival in the fallow meadows in 2016, the audience still consisted of narrow-minded indie lovers and older festival junkies. This Sunday evening, the scream level is higher, as the band's regular audience has halved or even tripled in age over the last eight years - what happened?

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

El Dorado of melancholy
The simple answer: corona. The detailed one: Corona and the impact on a youth that has been left in the lurch. While adolescents across the globe were unable to sow their wild oats for a good two years, they sought salvation in cultural salvation during their forced isolation. In other words: computer games, Netflix, TikTok. On the latter hype platform, the attention-grabbing short videos were increasingly accompanied by the Texans' heavy songs and a chain reaction was set in motion. Along the way, the songs by Cigarettes After Sex were added to the "Sad Indie Songs" playlists of Swedish streaming giant Spotify. A generation (Z) searching for solace and understanding found their El Dorado in the eunuch-like voice of frontman Greg Gonzalez, which blends with repetitive, decelerated instrumental structures and thus forms an absolute counterpart to the speed of the platform on which the band was shot to lofty heights.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

This made it possible for the Brooklyn-based duo to develop an internet cult following and for venues to get bigger and bigger every year - but always sold out. The organizers did not even expect to be able to put up the "sold out" sign (14,000 people) in the country's largest hall just one year after a show in the Gasometer. Long-time fans of the band are now in the minority. The older ones are on duty in droves to accompany their offspring, who in turn celebrate the same songs as their parents or guardians. It's a cycle that rarely comes full circle. The magic of the band can only be recognized if you are not completely averse to the darkness of existence. Just one day after the Italian wrecking ball Gigi D'Agostino, the Texans' set comes across as a musically staged funeral liturgy.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

A certain basic distance
Three delicate people in fashionably practical black populate the oversized stage, on which there is no room for effects. No volleys of fire, no spraying sparks or other gag gimmicks. During the first few numbers, the band, which refuses to allow photographers to take color pictures, dresses in a curtain-like light cube that conveys a certain basic distance. Frontman Gonzalez is now graying with dignity and has let his hair flow since the last rendezvous. With his leather jacket, sunglasses and electric guitar, he looks more like a Norwegian garage rocker than a mystical storyteller with a deep love for dense worlds of sound. The songs on the album "X's", which was released in the summer and which unravel very clearly and intimately around Gonzalez's experiences from his failed four-year relationship, are apparently so close to him that he is very sparing with them.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

But perhaps it's also because the band's musical oeuvre has become too repetitive. The classics from the debut EP "I." and the debut album "Cigarettes After Sex" are so intense and haunting with their mixture of shoegaze, slowcore and melancholic art-pop that everything that followed was inevitably doomed to failure. This is evident not least in the full-length direct comparison, where new songs such as "Dark Vacay" or the Texan hometown anthem "Tejano Blue" crash against classics such as "Sweet" or "Heavenly", which are also euphorically shouted out by the audience. The magical moments of the evening required little frippery. A little more light and a striking introductory bass line for "Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby", a collective sing-along in the hall for "K." and a messianic performance of the band's top hit "Apocalypse", at the end of which Gonzalez kneels down and purposefully hands the setlist to an enthusiastic fan.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Messianic distribution of wafers
Despite the distanced soundscapes, the musician's closeness to his followers is always palpable. The lavish video wall is rarely used in the background of the stage. When it is, you can see a colorless full moon floating in the firmament, shining over the sea or fighting against clouds of fog. In "Cry", a waterfall is also used once as a visual suffix. Twice Gonzalez addresses his disciples quietly and thankfully, in between moving to the front of the stage to hand out picks like wafers and wallow in the cheers of the crowd. The fact that Gonzalez always feels a little lost in the process makes the youth show likeable again and compensates for the fact that numerous redundancies creep in, even in a narrow 80-minute show. But Cigarettes After Sex isn't about variety and progression. It's about restoring the joy of life to a battered generation with the help of melancholy. In doing so, the gloomy trio has achieved more than wildly bouncing pop acts without a message.