When Cigarettes After Sex frontman Greg Gonzalez sat down to Lenny Abrahamson’s thoughtfully explicit adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People in 2020, he felt he was looking back at a cracked reflection of his own artistic impulses.

“In Normal People, they are in love,” he says. “The sexuality is included because it’s important to the story. That’s how I write music. I couldn’t tell an honest story about my own love life without including sexuality and having that in there in a way that feels genuine.”

There are bands whose names are a calculated exercise in misdirection – and then there is Cigarettes After Sex, who live up to their moniker with music framed by Gonzalez’s granular eye for erotic detail. He’s an old romantic but, much like Leonard Cohen in his doomed ladies’ man prime, he feels it is important to acknowledge and celebrate – and occasionally lament – the sensual side of love.

“You can talk about sexuality in a personal way,” Gonzalez says. “My contribution to music could be to say: if you want to write about it, write about it.”

Gonzalez explores sex in the same way Normal People does – it’s certainly in your face, and viewer discretion is advised. Yet the passion is underpinned by melancholy, the heat of love infused with the cold ache of loss and regret. In the most positive sense possible, it’s erotica for misanthropes – an aesthetic which arguably reaches its pinnacle on his beautifully baroque third LP, X’s.

He doesn’t hold back. “We wanted to fuck with real love / Wanted it sweet, so pure and warm,” Gonzalez sings on ‘Tejano Blue’, an early single and one of several numbers tracing the unravelling of a long-term relationship.

Powered by Gonzalez’s breathy, esoteric singing voice, Cigarettes After Sex could easily be mistaken for a textbook underground act – widely adored but not exactly possessing mainstream appeal. In fact, they’ve achieved breakout popularity, and while their latest tour skips Ireland, it takes in a number of arena performances, including a gig at London’s 20,000 capacity O2. Those achievements are testament to the power of Gonzalez’s writing – and the universal note he strikes with his tales of bedroom angst and bad romance.

He isn’t surprised by Cigarettes After Sex’s popularity. He always had mainstream ambitions for the project, in which he is backed by drummer Jacob Tomsky and bassist Randy Miller.

“Things were on that track way for a while,” he notes. “There was a road we’ve been on. Honestly, that road has been there since I was a kid. In my mind I wanted to be as big as those artists I’m listening too – Metallica or stuff like that. I thought, those artists to me represented powerful, universal writing. That was what was exciting in music. I thought if I’m a good writer, if my music is as powerful as them, it should get into these same places. So it was always meant to do that. It wasn’t aiming to be a cult act or something.”

Gonzalez grew up in El Paso, Texas, and moved to New York in his early twenties to pursue his music career. Until now, he’s never referenced his Texas background – something he amends with ballad ‘Tejano Blue’. The song is partly inspired by the Mexican-American pop star Selena – a mix of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis – who was murdered in 1995 at age 23, when Gonzelaz was just a kid.

“Selena was beyond legendary, especially where I grew up,” he reflects. “She was an intense icon. The fact she died tragically only added to her legend. She was like Marilyn Monroe – very beautiful but tragic. I was late to her music. When I was kid, I didn’t gravitate towards her. I was listening to different things – coming from a more avant-garde, or harder-edged, place. It wasn’t until I went to New York and was listening to her music again that I thought, ‘Oh, this music by Selena is pretty great.’”

He hit upon a brainwave – why not combine Selena with one of his favourite influences?

“I thought, ‘Oh, is there a way to put the style of Selena into Cigarettes? Maybe it’s Selena meets Cocteau Twins.’ It was an exciting idea for me. No one else would think of that. It felt far-fetched – but it was personal to me. I love Cocteau Twins, I love Selena. Why not combine them and see how that goes? That idea created a few songs on the album – it created a song called ‘Tejano Blue’ and a song called ‘Ambien Slide’. ‘Tejana Blue’ is like the sunrise of the relationship and ‘Ambien Slide’ is the sunset.”

Cigarettes After Sex Credit: Ebru Yildiz

He draws inspiration from all over, name–checking not only the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine, but also Irish pop’s very own Lady Galadriel, Enya.

“I always loved her stuff,” he enthuses. “Her stuff does function in a pop format. She sings in Gaelic [sic]. Her structures are like pop structures. Honestly, she’s a huge influence. I don’t see that much of a difference between Enya and the Cocteau Twins. Whenever I mention Enya, people would be like, ‘Wait, really?’ She wasn’t as respected, in maybe criticism, as the Cocteau Twins. People lumped in her in with New Age music. She’s actually an incredible artist, a lot of her music is strange.

“I thought it was unfair – ‘You guys don’t see Enya as this creative force?’ And she writes pop songs too. I love the atmosphere that these artists all do – Enya, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins. But is there a way to make it personal for me – to sing about personal topics and be more pop with it?’”

Cigarettes After Sex have enjoyed critical acclaim, and attracted some influential fans, including late chanteuse Françoise Hardy, with whom Gonzalez become friendly. They would communicate by email: he was aware she was in poor health prior to her death in June at age 80.

“She was a huge fan – even to the point where she wrote an article about it,” he says, referring to a piece Hardy penned for the website Talkhouse.com, in which she described Cigarettes After Sex as the band “I have been looking for all my life”. He recalls their interactions with astonishment.

“I used to walk around my home town with a t-shirt with her on it,” he recalls. “We got an email saying she wanted to meet us. It was like the stars had aligned. I kept in touch with her. I knew she was in poor health and didn’t have much longer. Even years ago she would say, ‘I feel I’m getting close to the end’. I would write back and say, ‘I hope your days are sweet as long as you are here.’”

Cigarettes After Sex’s name has caused issues from the start. Before an early gig, at the University of Texas at El Paso, they were told they would have to play as “CAS” – or else the plug would be pulled.

“It’s always been a problem,” notes Gonzalez. “It has two dangerous things in it. Cigarettes, which are widely demonised. And then you have sex.”

He takes a beat before continuing: “One of the first gigs I played at my college… We were playing outdoors. And they were like, ‘Oh guys, we can’t say your  name’. They called us CAS. And El Paso is pretty liberal – it’s not conservative. I guess it was the school context. Even though they were showing movies on campus that had sex and drugs in them. So it’s kind of a weird thing. Our name is most policed if we go to Asia or [Arabic countries]. Almost to the point where we weren’t able to go. When we play those concerts, we usually have to play as CAS.”

The way he sees it, there are two choices. To agree to be billed as “CAS” –  or refuse to perform. For the sake of his fans around the world, Gonzalez feels it’s better to compromise.

“I want to play for our fans,” he says. “People know what it is. We didn’t change our name. It’s that you can’t say your name in this place. Okay, I get it. I just want to play.”

• X’s is released out now.