Concert review - CIGARETTES AFTER SEX and their black and white atmospheres (The setlist)

Cigarettes After Sex enchanted Milan with a unique and eagerly awaited concert at the Unipol Forum, where the American trio gave fans an immersive musical journey between dreamy sounds and black and white atmospheres.

One year after their last Italian performance, the band returns to celebrate the release of the new album “X's” with an exciting and hypnotic setlist, made up of iconic songs and moments of pure emotional transport.

The same style as the records

Those who love the American trio for the atmospheres they manage to create, for their calm, soft and dreamy style that they offer on their records, were not disappointed by this live performance in Milan.

There is the whole sound world of the group made up of Greg Gonzalez (vocals and electric guitar), Randall Miller (bass) and Jacob Tomsky (drums), there are their melodies, their carpets of guitar arpeggios, there is the essence of a sparse yet enveloping sound. In just under an hour and a half of concert, the band manages to capture the audience, with a magnetic frontman, with a particular voice that brings all the spectator's attention to himself, also because there is nothing around him that can be distracting.

A live in B&W

What dominates, as in the entire graphic aspect of the band, is black and white: the lights are white, their look is black and the screen that accompanies the first songs of the set list. When the images appear on the screen behind the band, these too are strictly in B&W. It's a full moon appearing and disappearing behind the clouds or it's the face in extreme close-up of the singer and guitarist.

The three are almost immobile on stage, only Gonzalez takes a few steps, everything is focused on the music, it is in fact a concert to be experienced on an emotional level rather than a spectacular one. You have to close your eyes, let yourself be captured by the sounds and melodies that the three give to the public, enter a dreamy, dreamlike, melancholy but devoid of sadness world.

It's a relaxed and relaxing approach to music, without flashes, without sonic peaks, but rather emotional. Cigarettes After Sex's songs dig deep and touch the chords of emotion, on record and live.

Concreteness and melodies without frills. They capture

Everything is in the name of the essential and the concrete with the great vocal melodies that explode in “Sunsetz”. Only “Dreaming of you” suddenly becomes harsh (in moderation). The rest of the concert is calm, introspective to the point that, for once, even the audience listens almost in religious silence.

But the eighty minutes of the concert are not boring, on the contrary, the three stage a bewitching and melancholy but not depressing, seductive and warm show, to be experienced more mentally than physically.

And the Milan public seems to like it, accompanying the arrival of the band's “hits” with roars and turning on their telephone torches in the most suggestive and intense moments of the show.

Cigarettes After Sex capture you and take you into their dreamy and captivating world. Well done. To follow when they return.

SCORE: 8.50

THE LADDER

X's
You're All I Want
Dark Vacation
Pistol
Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby
Touch
Falling in Love
Tejano Blue
John Wayne
Cry
Sweet
Sunsetz
Heavenly
K.
Dreaming of You
Apocalypse
Opera House