Spectreview: Elvis Depressedly – depressedelica

Elvis Depressedly’s depressedelica, despite the dire context, still feels strangely joyous in its confident stylistic shifts.

-LIGHT SLATE BLUE-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

Disclaimer: This article was written without prior knowledge of Mat Cochran’s abuse allegations against Sam Ray and others. Based on what’s we’ve learned, the situation is torrid and messy and grounded in a lot of unstable behavior, but we don’t condone abusive conduct in any way, sexual or otherwise. What Cochran allegedly did is and was fucked up. We’re keeping this article up because it’s our fault that we didn’t do our research, but we apologize to anyone who knew about it beforehand. We sincerely hope Cochran’s gotten better since.

“Let’s break up the band, we gave up our lives trying to understand 
“What it could mean to be one mind, in a touring van 
Then the engine died”

Matthew Lee Cothran was not okay. That may be the iconic sentiment of every sad sack writing music over the last few decades, but sometimes it gets a little too real. When Cothran, who makes music under Elvis Depressedly, chose to delay the release of his latest album in five years because of mental illness and alcohol addiction, it suddenly brought a distressing vibrancy to his lyrics, a cutting edge to his sounds.

Six months afterward, depressedelica is here, and it’s not only a welcome return for the cult singer-songwriter, but a wondrous culmination of everything he’s done since. Cothran’s closest analogue might be the warped confections of (Sandy) Alex G, but Elvis Depressedly’s work is undoubtedly darker, and depressedelica might be his darkest work yet. Visceral imagery abounds in his words: pools of blood, rot, mental breakdowns, instruments of self-harm, run-ins with the police, it’s all here in disconcerting detail. Everything’s done tastefully though, with Cothran’s fleet-footed songwriting refusing to let the words drag the album down into melodrama. Like many talented songwriters, he’s got a gift with balancing emotional resonance with restraint. His arrangements, which run the gamut from folky stompers (marvelous opener “who can be loved in this world?”) to auto-tuned surges that feel almost breakcore-like (“chariot”), sharpen the negativity into a fine point, cutting through your body. More impressively, he adds brilliant little touches to his songs that make them feel like whole entities, like the guiro-like clacking and sample manipulation on “why is my guitar rotting?” or the tremolo-like shuddering on his voice in the album’s darkest point, “primal sigh.”

Straight-faced and restrained, Cothran keeps the listener dipped in his quagmire like an Easter egg without dropping them in completely, and the result is an listen that’s equal parts enchanting and distressing. Despite the context, depressedelica still feels strangely joyous, as if it’s a celebration of the wild places the creative process can take us.

Recommended for bouncing off of the seafloor.