“Do it with the lips that you kept when I said I was yours
With X’s on the prints, they’re of Marilyn by Bеrt Stern …”
This lyric, taken from the eponymous opener to X’s, the third album from El Paso dream-pop band Cigarettes After Sex, sets the tone for a hazy ode to lost love, as Chloe Catajan writes in her review for Riff Magazine.
“Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex cuts straight to the chase when it comes to the meaning of X’s. He briefly references it in an intimate verse on the album’s opening track. It calls out Bert Stern’s Marilyn Monroe crucifix photos, taken weeks before her death.
X’s introduces its heroine through allusions of Monroe in boudoir and Marvel’s Silver Sable, specifically the ‘swimsuit special’ edition. She stars in steamy vignettes from Gonzalez’s point of view, which slip into subconscious thoughts that give away the state of the relationship.
X’s doesn’t seek a resolution, nor does it seek to forget the pain. It chooses to remember the relationship for what it was in all its glory, beautiful but doomed. We even hear this in the record’s composition as it explores sounds that reframe Cigarettes After Sex’s signature melancholia.
After all, X’s are more than just the markings on Marilyn Monroe photos. They’re also an old love, an abbreviated kiss and a variable for what’s unknown.”
Of course, the original x’s were added to Stern’s photos by Marilyn herself, to denote the images she had rejected. Although Stern published them after she died, art historian Griselda Pollock has argued that the markings can be read as a ‘painterly gesture,’ allowing Marilyn to reclaim her likeness from Stern’s intrusive gaze.
The band has shared reels from Some Like It Hot – and perhaps more dubiously, Blonde – on Instagram.
In a recent interview for Hot Press, Gonzalez likened Marilyn to another superstar who died young.
“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.'”
The Marilyn Report 