"Each Time You Fall in Love" follows "K" and "Apocalypse" as the third track from Brooklyn ambient pop quartet Cigarettes After Sex's full-length debut, which is due on June 9, via Partisan Records. Their aesthetic (and visual imagery) are nothing if not consistent, but then again, intimacy is a subject matter that popular music can seemingly never tire of. Promises of innovation have nevertheless been made. Frontman Greg Gonzalez's clain that some of the band's lyrics will be more "sweetly pornographic" are not fulfilled with this particular track, although it certainly lives up to his second claim that other songs on the album will be "stranger and more dreamlike".
On this track, Gonzalez's haunting vocals are once again paired with a hypnotic and airy melody that sooths, enchants and lulls - even though Gonzalez's take on romance this time is decidedly ambivalent: “[It’s] mostly about how I was never able to find myself completely satisfied with any romance or love affair that I had been through. It was as if I was always on the lookout for something more and it had gotten me into plenty of trouble over time.”
There's a hint of danger in the song's lyrics, which juxtapose the promised freedoms of the open road with warnings about safety, deception and financial recklessness:
'Each time you fall in loveIt’s clearly not enoughYou sleep all day and drive out in L.AIt isn’t safeAnd each time you kiss a girlYou never know what it’s worthYou say all of the words they wanna hearIt isn’t realShe took you for a ride in summer babyLost all your money to herAll I wanna know is if you love herHow come you never give inEach time you have a dreamYou never know what it meansYou see that open road and never know which way to go'
Lyrics: Genius
The song's central question is framed in the song's hook: 'All I wanna know is if you love her/ How come you never give in?' This is the kind of song that allows you to escape into what seems like a blissful dreamworld - while floating very realistic questions about romantic illusions and frustrations.
