[REVIEW] Coma Cinema :::: Stoned Alone

     Coma Cinema's new album, Stoned Alone, dropped this past Monday on cassette and digital download via one of my favorite young labels, Arcade Sound Ltd, and boy what a treat it is.  From the softly smooth beginnings of "In Lieu Of Flowers" Mat Cothran's vocals creep into your head and whisper from a world of truth most bands take several years to find.  It's hard to describe the emotions associated with this album.  It's definitely sad music, but something about it makes me feel at peace with its depressed loneliness.  Where many bands transfer sad and somber sentiments through noncommittal lyrics, Coma Cinema's word choice and vocal delivery scream with raw and beautiful emotion that draw you in. Stoned Alone definitely seems be coming from a darker, more well defined, conceptual place than their last effort, Baby Prayers, but all of the elements that made their first album the pop gem that it was are still standing strong.

     "Only" is the album's quintessential slow builder, starting off with nostalgic chords on your grandmothers ancient and dusted house organ, and then picking up slowly to stumble through minimal drums and sparse but heavy piano stabs.  Sucker Punch comes at a noticeably faster pace than earlier tracks, following behind "Only" with a driving, harsher attitude that earlier tracks lack.  "One good death deserves another, one good death deserves another; gunna drive these feelings out of my heart and drown them in the lake."  I guess now is as good a time as any to mention how soothing Mat's falsetto ooh's feel throughout the whole album, and the end of Sucker Punch if a perfect example of how they give many songs that extra push to drown you in blissful sound.

     By Bath Of Time the album briefly reaches a more upbeat chord progression, but the screechy synth/guitar noises that trade musical moments with the verse serve as reminder of the emotional space where this album came from: somewhere in the uncomfortable and undeniable beauty of solitude.  Blissed brings us back home as the second to last track, and comes as a much more blatantly sad but beautiful piece of dwindling high guitar and lethargic drumming, building slowly only to be drowned out by synths and soon after die to make room for the albums closer, Have You?: a painfully honest fingerpicked lullaby.

Sing me to sleep Coma Cinema---

Really great video for "Only" by Tyler T Williams.  Below preview album opener, "In Lieu of Flowers", and check out a remix I did for Sucker Punch-- enjoi>

mp3:

Coma Cinema - In Lieu of Flowers

Coma Cinema - Sucker Punch (Kohwi Remix)

Buy Coma Cinema :::: Stoned Alone via Arcade Sound on Cassette+Dgtl for $5+shpping (for realz, you won't regret it)