Depressingly, you can find one of America’s finest underground songwriters holding down a day job at the US equivalent of B&Q. Belatedly following up 1999’s The Gasoline Age, Cornog?who is ERP?continues to fashion beauty from his New Jersey home via a Tascam 388 mini studio. All synthetic texture, drum splutters and sustain, Garbageheads… sounds like Elton’s Madman Across The Water as reimagined by Stephin Merritt; Lou’s The Blue Mask via Baby Bird. As a result, the portraits of social outcasts (he himself was once a down-and-out) are both empathetic and graceful.
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