The fifth and final album from Coma Cinema, Loss Memory, is a wonderfully emotional and original final statement from multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Matthew Lee Cothran. Loss Memory finds Coma Cinema confronting once-bleak repressed memories of addiction and childhood trauma with maturity and elegance.

The lyrics on Loss Memory, similarly to their past releases, are mournful and disheartened.

While the songs share the same beachy pleasance with Deerhunter’s most accessible moments, with sharp arrangements based around uplifting piano and drum machines, lyrics like “and as my family dies from cancer, I am teary-eyed and weak, I'm not weary of disasters, the end is numb, for everyone, eventually“ (from the track “Eventually“) are the sentiments this album revolves around.

Coma Cinema has been revered and celebrated in a small but artistically bright musical community since its 2010 album Stoned and Alone, and if Loss Memory does end up being his last album, it will mark the moment that Coma Cinema matured past the restrictions of the bedroom and cemented himself as an influential American songwriter.

The album is full of moments where Cothran shows off his amazing songwriting abilities with shades of Sparklehorse, Randy Newman and Tobias Jesso Jr. at their poppiest.

“Blissed” is full of ’90s basement sound goodness, and Cothran sings about having bad dreams over lush-sounding synth strings. While this may be the last album from Coma Cinema, there is no doubt that Matthew Lee Cothran will continue to make powerful music.

- Mackenzie Bigler

Published in Volume 72, Number 18 of The Uniter (February 15, 2018)