“Cothran has always had a penchant for brevity, but this, his final release of 2013, takes that credo almost to its breaking point. Of the four songs here only one passes the two minute mark, and just barely at that. Fittingly, it’s also the songwriter’s most direct paean to apathy yet, with dark pronouncements that ‘all last year I wanted to die / and no one was there to change my mind’ and ‘someday we’ll beg to die’ clouding his warm, cozy melodies and lo-fi arrangements.
There’s less use of keyboards and synthesizers here than we get from a typical Elvis Depressedly or Coma Cinema release, with mostly acoustic guitars and prominent bass lines guiding these songs along. That starkness is perhaps why this is one of his rare releases to get tagged with his given name. For all its slightness, though, the power of Cothran’s seemingly innate gift for song shines through brightly here. On the closing ‘I Don’t Know,’ he sings with aching poignancy and intimacy of ‘sinking down into your heart where I belong / but in the end my secrets keep me alone’ over a spare guitar line, and the record ends just a few moments later, leaving you painfully, beautifully alone. –Kyle Petersen
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About Jasper
What Jasper Said is the blogging arm of Jasper – The Word on Columbia Arts, a new written-word oriented arts magazine that serves artists and arts lovers in the Columbia, SC area and its environs in four ways:
Via Print Media – Jasper is a bi-monthly magazine, releasing in print six times per year in September, November, January, March, May & July, on the 15th of each month. Jasper covers the latest in theatre and dance, visual arts, literary arts, music, and film as well as arts events and happenings;
Via Website – Jasper is an interactive website complete with a visual arts gallery, messages from Jasper, an arts events calendar that is updated several times daily, bite-sized stories on arts events, guest editorials, local music, dance & theatre videos, community surveys, and more;
Via Blog – What Jasper Said -- you're reading this now -- is a daily blog featuring a rotating schedule of bloggers from the Jasper staff as well as guest bloggers from throughout the arts community;
Via Twitter – Jasper Advises is a method of updating the arts community on arts events, as they happen, with more than a half dozen active tweeters who live, work, and play inside the arts community everyday ~ Jasper Advises keeps the arts community abreast of what not to miss, what is happening when it is happening, and where to be to experience it first hand.
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