Cigarettes After Sex - X's (Clear Vinyl)

Filled with raw, imagistic, sometimes smutty vignettes set to entrancing, slowburn 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.”