It's oddly coincidental that Gonzalez had this interaction at the Chateau, the same locale that author and artist Eve Babitz chronicled so vividly in her writings. Babitz’s visceral narrative which evokes sharply drawn imagery is strikingly similar to Gonzalez painting tangible scenes with his music and tantalizing, whispered lyrics. I mention this connection to Gonzalez and, unfamiliar with Babitz, he makes a note of her name in his phone so he can pick up her books later.
We’re practically matching in our black leather jackets. In fact, we’re black-clad from top to toe, a Cigarettes After Sex requisite I discovered when I saw the group perform in 2017, at the time of their eponymous debut album. The audience was dressed up in black leather, lace, and heels, their appearance an accompaniment to the seductive vibe of the music. “It’s one of my favorite things to see,” Gonzalez admits. “It feels cultish—a sweet cult.”
It is the ideal place, and time, to speak to Gonzalez as he is in the bloom of new love. Considering how many relationships have been soundtracked by Cigarettes After Sex’s limerence-steeped and sexually explicit music, it’s fun to have its creator in the same position as his fans.
“If I fall in love, it's a distinct feeling, this crazy dopamine rush,” Gonzalez says. “You get super high just thinking of somebody. The person I'm with now, it all happened so fast. Before, there was always [sexual] intimacy, then I would fall in love. But this is the first person I fell in love with just by talking and I hadn't even met her yet. It was totally different. There aren't the boundaries I've had before with other people. She's very spontaneous and independent. I've dated other people where they were very needy, and I wanted to help them. I tried too hard and messed things up. The current one feels like the most freeing relationship.”
Listening to Cigarettes After Sex gives the impression that Gonzalez has had numerous relationships. But he says there have only been 10 “serious” girlfriends. There have been people he’s dated casually, people he’s been in love with that he wasn’t in a relationship with, people he was in love with who broke his heart and vice versa, and those he wasn’t in a relationship with whom he had sexual encounters. All of the above are fair game for Cigarettes After Sex material.
The songs have hit a global chord, literally. Gonzalez is in Los Angeles, his adopted hometown of the last five years, for a short spell in between tour dates that are taking the group to countries like United Arab Emirates, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Africa, not to mention Europe and all over North America. Many of these countries are return stops for Cigarettes After Sex, whose last album, X’s, released summer 2024, catapulted them to arena status worldwide.
“There are artists who have a few love songs, but this is pure romance-based and maybe that is a more easily accepted universal theme,” says Gonzalez. “My first hot relationship, we were both obsessed with music. We went to a concert. It was raining after. We ran to a phone booth and made out. There’s a lot of first crush, first love, first girlfriend going on at our concerts. Almost 90% of comments we get from fans we meet after the show is, ‘It's my first concert.’ It should be the same experience for them.”
It took Gonzalez a long time and many musical experiments before Cigarettes After Sex had their inexplicable breakthrough on YouTube in 2015 with the song “Affection.” Prior to that, they released the four-song EP, I in 2012 when Gonzalez was still living in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. He moved to New York soon after but started receiving communication from remote countries like Brazil. “I was getting emails from fans saying things like, ‘My girlfriend passed away and your music really helped,’” he says. “It was heartfelt stuff coming from all over the world.”
The signature sensual and languid sounds of Cigarettes After Sex evolved from the influence of a wide range of music and films. Growing up, Gonzalez’s father was in video distribution and the younger Gonzalez had access to countless VHS tapes, from B horror films to French cinema to reissues of classics like Casablanca and Chinatown and softcore porn, the first of which he watched when he was 11. His parents didn’t put restrictions on his viewing, although they “frowned upon” the latter, but, “It wasn’t forbidden, and it contributed to the Cigarettes sound,” says Gonzalez.
Musically, Gonzalez mentions Metallica more than any other band. In fact, he is uncannily able to work Metallica into random parts of our interview, sliding in references to the group at unexpected turns, from how listening to them, and death metal in general, got his guitar chops together to how the all-black Cigarettes After Sex wardrobe takes its cues from those concerts. He’s even trying to figure out a way to bring metal into the Cigarettes After Sex equation to “make metal romantic.”
“Me going to metal shows at 12 was far beyond what was appropriate,” says Gonzalez whose gateway band to metal was Queen. “Kids that are that age now, that's like me all over again. They're finding something in [Cigarettes After Sex] music that feels dangerous. It feels new. It feels exciting. They can be that young and understand it. I was that young and understood the same thing.”
He continues, “I never left the feeling of going to metal shows. I always wanted the music I make to have some kind of metal feeling. The fun of those shows, but also the danger, and the cathartic darkness.”
After this tour wraps in April. Gonzalez plans to take off a few years from touring. Instead, he hopes to point his creativity toward the screen, writing and directing a film. “It’s pretty much an impossible side pivot,” he admits. “I think Rob Zombie’s the only one who’s done it successfully.” This is an intriguing prospect, particularly considering Cigarettes After Sex has yet to make a video for their music. “Metallica didn’t do a video for a long time, not until the fourth record,” says Gonzalez, managing to slide Metallica into the conversation yet again.
“I loved music videos growing up but I'm not sure they have the same function as they did then,” he says. “The song is meant to be a novel. The video is in your mind. It feels unnecessary to do a video and I don't have any good ideas for videos. I have good ideas for films.”
From Metallica, Gonzalez shifted to the Doors and the Smiths, which he says are his two favorite bands. He kept evolving, getting into jazz, Miles Davis in particular, film scores and Francoise Hardy, his favorite singer. (“I had no idea what she was talking about, I just liked the feeling of it.”)
“I thrive on everything being really eclectic and that was my problem forever, my tastes were so eclectic I couldn't put it together,” says Gonzalez. “I’ve done different stuff in different bands—even Cigarettes was different when it started—but it didn’t give me an emotional release. I loved Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, but there was no pop payoff. How do I take that sound and make it into a pop song? I made a mix CD of the things that affect me the deepest emotionally and made me want to cry: Chopin and Francoise Hardy and Mazzy Star. Whatever music I make has to be like that: therapeutic or confessional or personal.”
Gonzalez comes across as thoroughly uninhibited in his lyrics, retelling the most revealing details of his intimate encounters, describing both the physical and mental experience. I tell him I’ve had many naughty thoughts while listening to Cigarettes After Sex, and especially provocative ones during my favorite song, the anime porn story “Hentai” from 2019’s Cry.
But, it turns out, Gonzalez gets shy when hearing his music in front of others. “Usually, if I have that experience, it means I’m on track,” he says. “I remember hearing ‘K’ being mixed for the first time and I felt so naked in front of everyone that was listening to it, like a cold wind blowing through me. That’s a sign that it’s probably good.”
The next Cigarettes After Sex album, which likely won’t be released until fall 2026, was recorded the week X’s was released. Recording the subsequent album at the time of release of the current album is a common practice for the group as, according to Gonzalez, “There’s no pressure.”
The as-yet-titled album is a “ketamine record” says Gonzalez who was new to the drug. It leans heavily into the ’60s and ’70s sounds, specifically, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon with a dose of The Virgin Suicides, which Gonzalez was watching on repeat. Topically, the album reflects Gonzalez’s experience post-break up after moving to Los Angeles, during what he calls, “A very polyamorous season, three loves at once. There was heartbreak too. For all that euphoric stuff when you fall in love, the heartbreak for me is brutal. It’s like being poisoned. I usually try to get over it really fast, throw it all up. I have mourned someone for years and that’s terrible. It’s way worse. I had to mourn each one of the three loves to be with the person I’m with now. It’s going to be painful to get into that stuff when the record comes out.”
He adds, “Sexuality in music is so forceful. It doesn't feel like sex. I want to make songs where it feels like the atmosphere of a really positive sexual experience in love. Gentle, but dirty.”
