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"Tonic" frontman Emerson Hart takes a stab at the solo career track with his first release, Cigarettes and Gasoline. Listening to first single released from the album, If You’re Gonna Leave, it seems pretty clear who the primary songwriter was in "Tonic," as the track could have been ripped from any one of their disc. But as you delve more deeply into Cigarettes and Gasoline, Hart does develop himself apart from the band setting. It’s not so much a matter of style, although he does stretch out to attempt a few different modes of expression here, as it is one of tone.

The hallmarks of his former crew do stamp the solo disc, which only makes sense as Hart was not only lead singer, but guitarist and chief lyricist. On Cigarettes and Gasoline, though, he takes the intensely personal nature of his lyrics a step beyond anything "Tonic" ever attempted, and the result is an album that’s almost unsettling in the depth of feeling.

Case in point, on the chorus for one of my favorite tracks on the disc, I Wish the Best For You, Hart sings, "You/me/why can't we see/that there's more to love/than we'll ever know?/Sometimes you're closer when you're letting go." Even without ever having been in that position, even after being able to fill in the "can’t we see," portion on the first time I ever listened to the song (an example of way too obvious, clichéd lyric writing that would usually have me turning up my nose), I was affected by the sentiment expressed by the person behind the song.

The feeling is brought home with the next lines, "We'll both regret the hurting/that we will do/You’ll learn to forget me/and I’ll try….I’ll try to forget." (As an aside, if a TV show like "Grey’s Anatomy" hasn’t licensed the song for use yet, it really ought to look into it.) This album is definitely at its best when Hart matches his words with mood-appropriate music. When he puts the downbeat lyrics to up-tempo music, the contrast is jarring, to the point where almost all the misses on the disc fit that category. Exhibit A is certainly, Ordinary, which features rhetorical lyrics about growing up to find oneself pretty mundane set to a horribly mismatched, bouncy, happy-go-lucky backing. I Know also fits the mould, what with Hart setting a tale of a wrecked relationship against jangly guitar lines.

When Hart gets it right, though, the effects are devastating. The album ends on a heartbreaking note, with the title track referencing the murder of Hart’s father when he was young. Cigarettes and  Gasoline, opening on an elegiac note, synth strings setting the appropriate tone. The production is deliberately lo-fi, with static-shrouded verses evoking memories of a time past, and a simple, yet brash bassline carrying the song along. When Hart sings, "I am trawling the ocean for the soul of my father," he reaches in and grabs your sympathies; you’re not really given a choice there. The effect is almost "Peter Gabriel"-esque, which in my book, is about the highest praise I can give.

The album as a whole, sad to say, doesn’t quite live up to its title track, but standouts like the aforementioned I Wish the Best For You, and the acoustic, Green Hills Race for California, certainly make the album worth a listen.