Album: East River Pipe, We Live in Rented Rooms (Merge)

Andy Gill
Friday 11 February 2011 01:00 GMT
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East River Pipe's F M Cornog is one of the most neglected songwriters operating in America today.

Working entirely solo on a primitive home-studio in his spare time, he constructs poignant settings of guitar, piano, drum-machine and string-synth pads for songs whose achingly beautiful melodies and understated delivery mask sometimes bitter sentiments. He's like a more blue-collar Leonard Cohen, minus the lothario charm. This features his familiar cast of low-lifes, hustlers and losers, from the spurned lover gloating over "Payback Time", to the self-made victim of "Conman". The most complex being the subject of "Tommy Made a Movie", so twisted by internet porn he has to keep his movie "locked inside his head". Yet as wretched as his characters often are, Cornog always affords them the dignity of their own volition.

DOWNLOAD THIS Backroom Deals; Payback Time; Tommy Made a Movie

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