Cigarettes After Sex have never shied away from exploring the messier corners of intimacy. “Anna Karenina,” their first release since 2024’s X’s, finds Greg Gonzalez in genuinely uncomfortable territory.
The band issued the track as part of a double single alongside a cover of The Doors’ “The Crystal Ship.”
Rather than the fully-sung melodies that have defined their work from “Apocalypse” through to X’s, “Anna Karenina” builds itself around extended spoken-word passages.
Gonzalez’s voice remains as hushed and intimate as ever. Stripped of melody, his delivery takes on an unsettling directness.
The effect is less like overhearing pillow talk and more like being trapped inside someone’s spiral of guilt and obsession.
Hazy guitar work shimmers in peripheral vision. A laid-back drum groove barely registers above a heartbeat. Tambourine accents catch the light like dust motes. These familiar textures frame something darker brewing beneath.
Anna Karenina throws herself under a train after her affair with Count Vronsky collapses into jealousy and social isolation. This tragic end anchors the song emotionally.
The chorus, where Gonzalez finally sings rather than speaks, uses this image as both metaphor and mirror. Witnessing Anna’s suicide becomes a reflection point for Gonzalez’s own entrapment.
How little Gonzalez explains makes this work. The spoken verses catalogue omissions and secrets, all the things left unsaid in a relationship already drowning in words.
“I never told you where I was going / I never told you what I was doing / I never told you any of my secrets, really.”
The repetition builds not towards catharsis but towards claustrophobia. Gonzalez isn’t seeking forgiveness. He’s documenting his own complicity in a mutual destruction.
The second spoken section shifts from omission to observation, describing a moment of physical intimacy: “Laughing as you take your shirt off / And you take your skirt off / And you jump / Into the swimming pool.”
What should feel liberating reads as haunted. Gonzalez claims “the world is on fire” as they embrace. Not passion. Apocalypse. A consuming force neither party can control.
Cigarettes After Sex have always dealt in longing and melancholy, typically within a gauzy, romanticised frame. “Anna Karenina” strips that away. The song explicitly frames the love as “deep and painful.”
The repeated insistence that “I’ll never get free / I’ll never be free” turns what might have been tragic romance into mutual imprisonment.
Listeners who come to Cigarettes After Sex for the soaring, reverb-drenched vocals that made “K.” and “Sunsetz” indie staples may find the spoken-word sections jarring.
There’s no easy entry point here, no hook to carry you through. The melodic chorus provides brief respite. Gonzalez cuts it short both times, refusing to let the song settle into conventional structure.
The band haven’t abandoned what they do best. Mood. Atmosphere. The tools remain the same. The purpose has changed.
If earlier work invited you to lose yourself in the dream, “Anna Karenina” forces you to stay present for the nightmare.
“Anna Karenina” won’t supplant the band’s most beloved tracks in fan affection, nor should it. It’s uncomfortable.
The song resists the easy pleasures that have defined much of their catalogue. It does suggest a band unafraid to mature in real time, to let their emotional palette darken and their experiments grow bolder.
Paired with their cover of “The Crystal Ship,” a song Jim Morrison wrote about his own doomed love affair, the double single presents Cigarettes After Sex at their most literarily ambitious.
Whether this marks a new direction or remains a one-off experiment, time will tell. It stands as one of their most striking achievements.
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