On 1999's The Gasoline Age, F. M. Cornog-- the man behind East River Pipe-- caught his reflection in a shiny pimpmobile paint-job and the glare of store windows lit by garish neon signs. He focused his withdrawal-fueled desires and fears on the gleaming surfaces around him, vividly evoking a rootless urban lifestyle and creating an impossibly absorbing and accidentally amazing album, the kind that springs more from luck than from intention. Adding to its mystique, The Gasoline Age seemed to extend directly from Cornog's backstory: He had been homeless and drug-addled for years, until a friend took him in, cleaned him up, encouraged his songwriting, bought him his signature Tascam 388, and eventually married him.
It's a well-deserved happy ending to a once-sad tale, even if Cornog continues to live in the shadow of The Gasoline Age. Two albums and nearly six years later, he's presumably cleaned up and more stable but still conflicted on the subject of drugs. What Are You On?, his sixth album, lives up to its title: It's full of drug songs, cruel kiss-offs, and oddball robot odes, all awash in his signature synth-heavy sound. That relatively lo-fi aesthetic remains surprisingly durable and idiosyncratic, especially on the doo-wop space anthems "Crystal Queen" and "I'll Walk My Robot Home". Compared to these more whimsical songs, drug ballads like the title track, "Druglife", and "Some Dreams Can Kill You" sound dour and defensive.
Cornog's old life obviously still haunts and inspires him, but What Are You On? nevertheless lacks a real subject. Unlike The Gasoline Age, this album has nothing for him to fixate on, no intermediary to connect all of his notions and needs. These songs are more direct-- and that isn't necessarily a good thing. What Are You On? bristles with unchecked bitterness that often curdles into condescension. Like to read The Wasteland? Well, Cornog thinks you're a tool: On "What Does T. S. Eliot Know About You?" he answers his own question by declaring, "He knows absolutely nothing/ But you talk and talk as if he do." Never mind that such a sentiment seems to miss a larger point about making and experiencing art (including his own), but that curmudgeonliness infects nearly all these songs, especially "The Ultrabright Bitch" and "You Got Played, Little Girl", which bridle with hostility. Without something to catch Cornog's reflection and refract his frustrations-- to make him seem human-- What Are You On? is a deeply unfriendly album.
