Merge Records
1999
The Gasoline Age
About This Album
Having unintentionally pulled off a "Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle" that makes the (equally accidental) Sex Pistols look like rank amateurs, Fred M. Cornog finally reappears with LP number four. A few years ago, he signed to a major label that subsequently folded. So he never recorded a note for them, but got to keep most of his generous advance. Good things sometimes happen to good people: this lightning stroke of outrageous luck meant that the reclusive but affable, well-loved solo songwriter could move his home studio out of New York to a small house in the New Jersey town of his youth. The first result is The Gasoline Age, an album that revolves around Cornog's modest but buoyant charm. Not that he's lost his throbbing melancholia or overriding sense of the shy underdog having his day. But somehow, the boy seems jazzed, more contented behind even his most pointed little barbs such as "All You Little Suckers" and "Shiny, Shiny Pimpmobile." With a little more space to set up his microphones than a tiny corner of a cramped Queens living room, Cornog's self-production seems more expansive, brighter but not glossy, warmer but no less homespun than earlier efforts such as 1994's Poor Fricky and 1996's Mel.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,7 and 10)

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