Texan indie-pop band Cigarettes After Sex performs at the Backyard Sports Club in Gurugram for the India leg of their ‘X’s world tour on 24th January, 2025
| Photo Credit: Ayaan Paul Chowdhury
The pensive crowd of sleek ebonies and ivories moving in murmuring unison outside the Backyard Sports Club in Gurugram last night could have easily been mistaken for a massive funeral procession if not for the palpable sense of anticipation spreading like static. Beneath the nippy night sky of a receding Delhi winter, indie-pop phenoms Cigarettes After Sex, those mystifying purveyors of witsful dream pop drenched in nocturnal longing, inaugurated the India leg of their ongoing X’s World Tour.
The Texan band’s whispering frontman, Greg Gonzalez, has a curious knack for turning understatement into an unsuspected spectacle. He’s never been one for flashy, crowd-pleasing theatres. In fact, his stage presence leans closer to a kind of monkish detachment. But the moment the shimmering opening notes of “X’s” floated into the night, the crowd was already his. Cigarettes After Sex doesn’t command your attention so much as lull you into giving it willingly. Part of their music’s soft, persisting charm has always been this cocoon of time suspended, that has consistently drawn in generations of fans that revel in their emotional ambush.
Frontman, Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex performs at the Backyard Sports Club in Gurugram for the India leg of their ‘X’s world tour on 24th January, 2025
| Photo Credit:
Ayaan Paul Chowdhury
I must confess that the audience was surprisingly more reverent than I’d expected. Though for a band so averse to reinvention, Cigarettes After Sex has the uncanny ability to keep its listeners inexplicably hooked. Their latest album, X’s, adds a faint disco sheen to their usual reverb-heavy melancholia but isn’t too stark a departure from their trademark style. Tracks like “Tejano Blue” and “Run Towards Your Fears” fit seamlessly into their setlist amongst the likes of classics, “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” and “Heavenly”. The songs bleed into one another, their edges blurred, like the smoke dissipating from the dimly lit stage. Their music never demands too much but offers plenty for those willing to lean in.
The band, predictably, stuck to their signature grayscale palette — minimalist lighting stretching into dramatic shadows, interspersed with film-noir video projections of burning roses, drifting snow, and waves collapsing in slow motion. It’s this calculated stagecraft masquerading as sobriety that tries very hard to look like it’s not trying at all. It’s a style that suits them, a kind of aesthetic humility that lets the songs do the heavy lifting.
Texan indie-pop band Cigarettes After Sex performs at the Backyard Sports Club in Gurugram for the India leg of their ‘X’s world tour on 24th January, 2025
| Photo Credit:
Ayaan Paul Chowdhury
Couples swayed, arms around each other, in rehearsed synchronicity; solitary onlookers mouthed lyrics with the fervour of a reflex. Even strangers exchanged knowing smiles, bonded by the music’s quiet ache. Cigarettes After Sex knows their crowd, and their crowd knows exactly what they’re getting.
During “Apocalypse,” two giant disco balls dropped across each other and turned the open-air venue into a galaxy of lights. There’s something almost comical about the ritual: thousands of strangers swaying in unison, mimicking stars while holding devices designed to distract them from moments like these. Gonzalez himself, briefly broke character to thank the crowd, his voice barely rising above his usual breathy croon.
Texan indie-pop band Cigarettes After Sex performs at the Backyard Sports Club in Gurugram for the India leg of their ‘X’s world tour on 24th January, 2025
| Photo Credit:
Ayaan Paul Chowdhury
What’s remarkable though, was the layers and layers of erotica laced into every note that felt almost forbidden to be made privy to on Indian soul. Not the garish kind that shouts for attention but a subtler, more insidious intimacy. Gonzalez’s voice is a smoky half-whisper, less sung than exhaled, carrying with it the faint heat of a confession you’re not sure you should have heard. The lyrics are stripped of pretense and wrapped around simple but potent images: lips, skin, a sensuous touch.
But let’s not pretend there isn’t a certain irony to all this. The band’s music of late has often been dismissed as “millennial background noise,” that thrives in a culture of overstimulation. Watching them perform live can only be described as being pulled into the soothing hypnosis of staring at a lava lamp for far too long, and might just feel a little bit silly if you think about it too hard. Gonzalez’s self-described “erotic lullabies” straddle a fine line between earnestness and kitsch, and could either melt your heart or make your eyes roll back into your skull depending on your mood — and maybe that’s the point.
As the night wound down a little prematurely than anticipated with the band’s encore, “Opera House,” the applause was genuine, if not thunderous. Gonzalez offered a few words of gratitude that felt just a tad rehearsed but sincere enough to pass and passed a few guitar picks into the ocean of onlookers. And then it was over, the crowd dispersing into the cold obliviating chaos of having to hail an Uber in the middle of nowhere, humming melodies that would undoubtedly resurface on late-night playlists and wistful Instagram stories to follow. Say what you will about Cigarettes After Sex, but their music sticks like perfume on your favourite sweater, even through the dusty smog of Gurugram.
For its predictability, the concert had moments of real transcendence that sneaked up on us all like the first hit of nostalgia for something we hadn’t even finished experiencing. And perhaps that’s the secret sauce behind Cigarettes After Sex’s magic after all: their power to make you feel like the main character in a movie you didn’t know you were starring in.
Cigarettes After Sex will be performing next in Mumbai today, followed by in Bengaluru on January 28, 2025. Tickets are now sold out on BookMyShow.
Published – January 25, 2025 07:49 pm IST
