Cigarettes and Gasoline

Album Review

Life is full of comings and goings, meetings and leavings, happiness and heart wrenching sorrow. Former Tonic frontman Emerson Hart has been touched by them all, and on his debut solo album, Cigarettes and Gasoline, he delves deep into life's constantly shifting currents. The title track is the most obviously autobiographical, as the singer/songwriter conjures up his hometown childhood, and its sights and smells. Its an achingly lovely song, shrouded in nostalgia, sorrow, and with a flicker of hope for the future. "Green Hills Race for California" is wrapped in yearning, this time not for a father taken away far too soon, but for friends and a lover of old, while the equally evocative "Vanity" muses over the future. Like most of us, Hart isn't sure whether he's ready to run toward it or away from it, and romance leaves him similarly conflicted. On the infectious, rocking "Run To" he wants more, on "Devastation Hands" he's the giving one. Shifting persona on "If You're Gonna Leave" he's damn cold, yet on the lush "When She Loves You" he's head over heels over love. Inevitably, though, relationships end in tears, as "Flyin'" describes, yet when love runs aground, how much better to both walk away with dignity, as Hart does on "I Wish the Best for You," a number destined to become perhaps the greatest break-up song of all time. Magnificently produced, and with inspired arrangements ranging from rousing power ballads to luminescent acoustic pieces, infectious pop-flecked tracks to angular rockers. The music may be eclectic, but the memorable, introspective lyrics are this album's defining glory.