“Her Sinking Sun”
from the album Blue Suicide
2011
Listening to Coma Cinema’s “Her Sinking Sun,” I keep coming back to that dragging zip of what sounds like a fly wriggling its way through the song’s crackling backdrop. It’s a subtle but welcome detail, a tender annoyance that saves you from sinking too quickly into oozy ethers of this track from one-man slow-burn bedroom artist Mat Cothran. He hails from South Carolina, but compared to some of the Palmetto State’s other one-man bedroom acts (Washed Out, Toro y Moi), Coma Cinema’s music is far less jubilant or nostalgic. In the case of “Her Sinking Sun,” it’s a downright heartache. What else would you expect off of a record titled Blue Suicide?
A morbid feeling hovers over “Her Sinking Sun” in a way that’s hard to shake. Watery synth tones are left simmering on the outskirts, while the lilt of an otherworldly voice swoops away in the distance. It’s as if Cothran himself can’t convince these elements to hang around for too long, as he bangs a steady drum, taking in the slow, strangely peaceful decay. It’s a sticky, sickly sweet hymn that’s over before you can properly absorb every nuance. What is apparent is that it seems to be as much about the act of losing something as it is about the reluctant acceptance of an inevitable demise. “Torn away from everyone, just sinking sun, I watch it die,” he warbles fatalistically, sounding as if he himself were wasting away as well. And almost on cue, the zip of that hungry fly leaves us with a skin-crawling reminder that time’s just about up.