Last week, Mat Cothran sent me an e-mail with a download code for hotter sadness, the new offering from his Elvis Depressedly moniker. Cothran, more famous for the recordings he’s made as Coma Cinema, is always quick to point out the dilapidated nature of his home-recording setup, a stash of borrowed and broken equipment that Shuffle profiled last month. He’s had some of his equipment for about nine years at this point. Bought second-hand or inherited, his gear has degraded at the same rate that his skill at recording has progressed. The resulting records have gotten more distorted and fuzzy with each release, while at the same time becoming more adventurous and immersive, Cothran’s limitations continually pushing him in new directions.

In keeping with this trend, Cothran’s message included yet another disclaimer about the current state of his equipment:

“you’ll notice the inherent shittiness in the quality of the recordings.  all my gear is broken and my pockets are crushed as fuck and little worlds are ending all over the place.  i hope you still like it”

That disclaimer is proper preparation for hotter sadness, an album as emotionally battered as Cothran’s equipment is worn down. Built from ragged acoustic guitar with subtle additions of synthesizer and fiddle, it’s a scuzzy folk record that squeezes an incredible amount of heartbreak into 14 minutes, a fitting compliment to 2012′s other Elvis Depressedly offering, mickey’s dead.  The rhythmic guitar strums and melodic elements blur in well-managed disarray, smudging like letters on a tear-stained page.  Cothran’s voice crackles, an appropriate addition to what might be his most distressed collection yet.

“You ran away from your uselessness like you had something to prove,” he seathes on “i can’t wait for you to die. “How fucking stupid can you be to think it wouldn’t follow you.” In the chorus he screams the title, the static accenting his agony and rage.

 Stream and free download of hotter sadness available below. —Jordan Lawrence