Whether it be under this chuckle-inducing moniker or under the guise of his more notable Coma Cinema project, over the last several years Mat Cothran has settled into quite the interesting little niche. While swaths of bedroom singer-songwriters have inundated Bandcamp over the last several years, Cothran’s lo-fi acoustic works drew attention for the heart-wrenching honesty with which he imbued the lyrics.
Elvis Depressedly, unsurprisingly, has long been a dumping ground for Cothran’s most downtrodden tracks, whether it be in the tape warped synth pop of last year’s Disgraceland or in the spacier ambient works of Save The Planet Kill Yourself. As of yet, all the project had seen was this series of disjointed EPs, that while each tied together in mood retained little similarity to one another in practice. Last week, Cothran took to Twitter, announcing the release of his latest work Mickey’s Dead. While it bears more resemblance to Disgraceland out of the two aforementioned EPs, more clearly mimics the upper tier Coma Cinema material and is certainly amongst Cothran’s best work to date.
“Daughter of A Cop” is built, like most of the album, around listless acoustic guitar strums and cheap drum samples that recall the earliest works of Owen Ashworth, whose Casiotone For The Painfully Alone project remains a frequent touchstone for these sorts of bedroom artists. Where this track stands out, as with much of Cothran’s material, is in it’s devastating imagery. Cothran spews such lines as “All that blood’s/gonna weigh you down,/ an ocean that won’t let you drown.” You can’t help but marvel at such songwriting, especially as it comes at the forefront of a lower fidelity composition than this sort of folk music is usually treated with. Like much of Mickey’s Dead it’s over in the blink of an eye after a brief instrumental outro, but the emotional impact of this track heavily outweighs its slight two minute runtime.
