Rosavelt cut their third album in an empty Cleveland club over three days—the amount of time it takes some bands to get a kick drum sound—and it rocks with desperate immediacy. Leading a group that has until now been known primarily as Tim Easton’s backup unit, writer/singer Chris Allen here comes into his own as a first-rate chronicler of life’s minor ups and downs. While Allen doesn’t shy away from big themes—“Emerald Hope” is a decidedly non-idealistic requiem for the hippie dream and “Saturday 3am Blue” is a beer-soaked ballad that threatens existential despair—he injects an equal dose of poignancy into the raggedy roots rockers that give this record its soul. Allen’s cohorts, including second-generation Cleveland rocker Jesse Bryson (son of the Raspberries’ Wally) on lead guitar, deliver the material with rawboned conviction, which is captured on the fly by producer Don Dixon (whose thick résumé starts with R.E.M.’s Murmur). You’ll pick up echoes of rollicking bands from The Faces to The Replacements on “Pointed Pistol,” “Bright Blue Hell,” “Broken Little Heart” and the album’s best song, “The Last Heartache,” but more than anything, The Story of Gasoline sounds like the belated follow-up to Wilco’s disarmingly unpretentious 1995 debut, A.M. If you miss the straight-talking side of Jeff Tweedy as much as I do, you’ll want to get to know Chris Allen.