But on his arrogant 2000 solo debut, Alone With Everybody, Ashcroft zapped his material of that vitality, drowning in a sinkhole of rock-poet pretension, lethargic tempos and his own self-aggrandizing moan. With its plodding follow-up, Human Conditions, he simply slips further down the spiral, stuck in a distended adult-rock moment he can't get out of. "Bright Lights" is a half-digested regurgitation of the Black Crowes' "Jealous Again" with none of that band's shabby joie de vivre; what's worse, an overdubbed bongo drum taps mercilessly throughout the song, so high in the mix it serves as a cheap sonic token of Ashcroft's spiritual investment in his music. He makes that mistake a lot, assuming that fussy arrangements can stand in for weak songwriting--on the preposterous "Nature Is the Law" Brian Wilson even steps in to add a layer of vain, ineffectual ooohs to a vain, ineffectual chorus.
Human Conditions isn't entirely without its pleasures. Ashcroft is actually at his best here when he shoots for the bruised AM-radio grandeur of prime Glen Campbell and Bobbie Gentry; "Buy It in Bottles," a genuinely sad-eyed lament on the topic he's always returning to, earns its wah-wah guitar and harmony vocal line. But the song's just a glint of meaning in a swamp of idle gestures. The drugs, as it turns out, really don't work.