Sweet

Cigarettes After Sex record with the particular quality of sound produced in small hours — everything slightly overexposed, the world contracted to the radius of two people. "Sweet" is built from Greg Gonzalez's falsetto voice set against guitar tones so clean they feel antiseptic, the contrast generating its own erotic charge. The production is minimal to the point of conceptual statement: this is music about the impossibility of explaining tenderness, and over-arrangement would undermine the message. Gonzalez's lyrics are direct in their subject matter — physical and emotional intimacy described without euphemism but without explicitness either, finding the register of devotion rather than desire. The sweetness of the title is authentic rather than saccharine, earned rather than assumed. Culturally the band belongs to a tradition of American indie pop that takes romantic love as its only subject — no politics, no irony, no distance — and handles that subject with complete seriousness. "Sweet" in particular achieves what the best love songs achieve: it makes the specific universal, finding in its precise emotional detail something listeners recognize from their own lives. Best heard in the actual small hours, in actual proximity to someone, with the city's ambient noise making its presence known outside.