He might not look familiar, but his voice haunts TV’s biggest shows

It’s safe to say that on a recent summer afternoon, when the humidity in Los Angeles reached a stifling 93 per cent, Greg Gonzalez was the only person walking down Hollywood Boulevard dressed head-to-toe in black and wearing a leather jacket.

I interviewed him seven years ago on a similarly sweaty summer day in New York City’s hip Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bushwick, and he was dressed the same way. The 42-year-old frontman of Cigarettes After Sex is consistent, in both the way he looks and the way his band sounds.

If you’re looking at that band name and scratching your head, you possibly know their music without even realising it. If you watched The Handmaid’s Tale, Big Little Lies, The Morning Show and Killing Eve, you’ve heard them. And if you’re a regular TikTok user, they’re all over it.

The group’s Hollywood rehearsal space includes the trio’s sparse set-up on a raised platform and a trestle table stacked with vinyl and CD copies of their upcoming third album awaiting Gonzalez’s signature. As we walk to a nearby bar, he talks about his love of films, from noir classic Double Indemnity to cult movie Harold And Maude.

He grew up in El Paso, Texas, and his father was a video distributor, so Gonzalez immersed himself in movies and had free rein as a teenager to watch everything from Chinatown to Goodfellas. When he moved to New York, he got a job at an Upper East Side cinema, the Beekman Theatre, eventually rising from usher to manager.

He had ambitions to make films, and still does, but he doesn’t have time for that right now. Cigarettes After Sex – which also includes drummer Jacob Tomsky and bass player Randall Miller – are about to undertake a 51-date world tour, playing venues including Madison Square Garden in New York and O2 Arena in London, finishing up in Australia and New Zealand in March next year.

How on earth did this cult band, who have been on a slow burn since forming back in 2008, become so huge? That’s what we’re here to discuss as we settle into a corner at the Frolic Room, a classic Hollywood dive bar that has been here since 1941, was frequented by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Charles Bukowski, and has been featured in films including L.A. Confidential and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

“I moved here to LA in 2020,” he says, between sips of neat Scotch. “The plan was always to move to New York first, then LA, and next on the list is Paris. So I guess if you and I are meeting every seven years, we’ll do our next interview there in 2031.”

The fact that he started dating Nour Petite, an LA children’s book author who describes herself on Instagram as “the reincarnation of Gene Tierney”, helped prompt the move to the West Coast. That relationship ended in 2022, but if you want to know about it, just listen to the new Cigarettes After Sex album, X’s.

Gonzalez is the opposite of Jim Carrey’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – instead of wanting to wipe the memory of a past love, he dwells on it and processes it by writing hushed, intimate, sepia-tinged songs.

“It feels like I have to do that, and it’s become very therapeutic,” he says. “The feelings are so deep that when I have these experiences, the only way to express my emotions and get to the heart of them is to write songs about them. Then I can sing about them, learn about what I’ve been through, and move forward.”

As always, this album includes personal details that serve as aural Polaroids – walking in the rain together to buy candy bars and wine in Dreams From Bunker Hill; combining liquor and Adderall at five in the afternoon in Dark Vacay. Yes, alcohol and drugs permeate more than a few of these songs, as do nakedly upfront lines such as “We wanted to f---, like, all the time” in Tejano Blue.

Before making X’s – whose title was inspired by the crosses Marilyn Monroe made on the contact sheets from her final photo shoot with Bert Stern in 1962 – Gonzalez put together a playlist of songs that he wanted to influence the sound.

He pulls out his phone and finds the playlist. It’s an eclectic mix that includes Madonna’s Take A Bow, Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting, Lil’ Wayne’s How To Love, George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby and Brian Eno’s Dunwich Beach, Autumn,1960.

For a band whose sound is so cinematic, and considering Gonzalez’s love of film, it’s ironic that there are no Cigarettes After Sex music videos.

“There are many music videos that I love, like Take On Me and Mysterious Ways and Like a Prayer,” he says. “But when I thought about my own music, I couldn’t rationalise why I should make videos. There just didn’t seem to be a reason for them, and in fact I thought they would detract from the music. I want to create images in people’s minds from just listening to the songs. ”

A side effect of the lack of visuals – even the covers of the albums and singles are impressionistic black-and-white photos, none of which include the band – is that many people hearing a Cigarettes After Sex song for the first time assume that the singer is a woman. Gonzalez’ speaking voice is deep and he speaks quite quickly, but his singing voice is high and whispery, and his delivery is narcotically slow.

His major vocal influence is Francoise Hardy. Her 1971 album, La Question, is his favourite record of all time, and he got to know her after she contacted him to say how much she loved his music. When Hardy died in June, just a week after this interview, Gonzalez sent me a message saying: “Her passing has been devastating. Her voice and her spirit have truly been the greatest influences on me and guided me in finding the beauty that I wanted Cigarettes After Sex’s music to have. The fact that she loved my music is also the most cosmic thing that’s ever happened in my life. I will love her forever and always.”

Despite the band’s lack of visuals, their rise has been abetted by visual media, albeit via channels largely out of their hands. Years after the 2012 release of Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby, a fan-made video on YouTube went viral, bringing the band more attention and prompting the producers of The Handmaid’s Tale to use the song to devastating effect in a key scene. An avalanche of synchs in TV series and films followed.

But the band has really exploded in the last couple of years due to a younger generation using their music in TikTok videos. It’s not lost on Gonzalez that a medium that is all about short, snappy and often silly 15-second grabs, should become a vehicle for music that is almost the exact opposite of all that.

“I don’t completely understand TikTok, but I’ve seen how it’s been good at bringing back older music for a younger generation, like Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill and Pavement’s Harness Your Hopes. When I was a kid, I listened to music like Slayer and Metallica and Nirvana because it sounded kind of dangerous to me. And although my music is very different, I think the songs have elements of lifestyles that are on the edge, and that’s possibly attractive if you’re a kid.”

A direct consequence of Gonzalez laying his life bare in his songs has been an equal openness from fans sharing their own stories. He estimates that about 70 per cent of the correspondence he receives is from people who tell him his songs got them through the worst of times, from heartbreak to the death of loved ones and suicidal thoughts.

“I see people in the audience crying at every one of our shows,” he says. “And I understand that, because when I’m broken-hearted, I have all these painful emotions, but I can’t get them out. So I’ll listen to What’ll I Do by Johnny Mathis, or Where Is My Love? by Cat Power, or Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, and then I’ll cry. Then there’s Romance Larghetto by Chopin, which goes for over 10 minutes, so it’s good if you need to go deep and cry for a while.

“I’ve had intense times of loss. There have been heartbreaks, and also really good friends who have died tragically. But I can put on Julee Cruise’s Floating into the Night or Morricone With Love and it’s like medicine. You realise you’re not alone and that someone else gets it and has been through it. So it’s like a circle. A lot of music saved me, so the music I make should help other people.”

X’s is released on July 12. Cigarettes After Sex play Rod Laver Arena on March 12, ICC Sydney Theatre, March 14, and Brisbane Entertainment Centre, March 17.