If you missed the advance press; if you missed the album title; if someone gave you a burned copy so you didn’t see the cover art – there’s still no missing the heart-worn devastation of End Times. Mark ‘E’ Everett sings opener The Beginning in his weariest baritone, its weight dragging down the otherwise sweet lyrics.

End Times is a divorce record, naked and unabashed. E is a ruined man, rarely able to lift himself beyond achingly slow tempos and rueful lyrics. There are few outbursts of anger, or Here, My Dear style venom – instead there is a tired resignation. In this, End Times is more of a spiritual cousin to Blood On The Tracks in its blend of melancholy, quiet nostalgia and palpable sense of loss.

Where Dylan hinted at hope, though, End Times sees Everett struggling vainly to find peace. There’s no redemption or salvation to be found here, and that makes for an emotionally draining listen. Everett never comes across as self-pitying or pathetic, but it does require a certain amount of empathy to be able to engage with such raw anguish.

The most positive thing Everett can offer is resolve, as he does on In My Younger Days. Reflecting on previous break-ups, Everett longs for the emotional resilience of youth as he struggles to shake his anger and sadness. Now older, the process of putting himself back together is longer and harder than before. His recovery might not be near, but, as he says, “it feels/not so far away”.

The rest of End Times circles around itself, emphasising and reiterating the simple fact that Mark Everett is still devastated by the collapse of his marriage. For the most part, Everett offers enough insight and variations on that theme to make the record compelling, especially the quiet ache of the spoken-word snippet Apple Tree.

If some of the album’s latter half feels like it’s running over familiar territory, it is in keeping with the traumatic tendency we all have of revisiting our pain, though a few more twists like Unhinged might’ve helped to keep the album’s momentum from flagging.

End Times is a record that should come with a bottle of hard liquor, a TV tuned to static and an old couch to slump on. Its every moment is heavy with Mark Everett’s pain, and should ideally be given, like The Mountain Goats’ Get Lonely, to every victim of heartbreak. Those in the first flushes of love might do better elsewhere.

Ends Times is out now on Vagrant through Shock.