Emerson Hart - Cigarettes & Gasoline
Manhattan Records (7/17/07)
Rock / Pop

Anyone reading this would more likely recognize Emerson Hart as the frontman for the band Tonic, a group which, in the mid-’90s, scored one (and only) big hit with “If You Could Only See”.

Now on his own, Hart has crafted an album that fails to measure up to that one big hit, but manages to string together a collection of songs that… well, isn’t entirely a waste. And I mean that in a completely positive way.

Take the opener, “Run To”. The song almost feels like a throwback to the mid-’90s, and I can almost imagine it getting tons of airplay. There’s this infectious bass hook underneath the proceedings, and the overall melody really pulls you in. And Hart sounds pretty comfortable behind the mic, but the lyrics just feel lacking, which can’t be a good thing when you shed the full band for a solo endeavor. The more I listen to the track, the more I like it musically but dislike the lyrics.

That pretty much sums up the entire collection. Everything feels like it has great potential, but something comes up to screw things up. The lyrics are actually pretty solid on “Devastation Hands”, but there’s a terrible synth/vocal bridge in the chorus that just sort of ruins everything.

Even the good stuff on here, songs like “If You’re Gonna Leave” or “Ordinary”, just seem like they’re aping the same formula on which a large bulk of the male singer/songwriters or a group like Daughtry rely. I can’t tell if it’s the song structure of the chords or what, but I could put together an entire album of these songs that you wouldn’t be able to distinguish from one another, apart from the differing vocals. Hart has a good voice, and he’s able to craft a good song, so why do the tired and true instead making something new and great?

As an aside, “I Wish the Best for You” is actually a very good song. It’s a little pedestrian in its approach, but taken in its entirety it’s a homerun. You wouldn’t be able to do 12 versions of it and call it an album, but it’s a great song around which to build an album.

In the end, it just feels like if there were a couple of risks… if he had taken a few more chances, the results could have been memorable. And we’d be left with a collection of songs that had an edge, and felt like they were worth something instead of being easily disposable. There are glimmers in some of the songs (the rock appeal of “I Know” or the haunting melody of “Green Hills Race for California”, another really special song on here), but most efforts sadly fall flat.

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