For this casual Beck fan, who admittedly has not heard all of his previous records, Modern Guilt is his worst and most lacklustre effort. On his eighth major label album, Beck steers clear of his normal collaborators - Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich - to hire the gun hand of Danger Mouse. After the uptempo and adventurous The Information album in 2006, Beck again allows his career output to bounce off into another varied direction.

With 60s sampler and mash-up master Danger Mouse on board, a return to the cut-and-paste ethos of his early genre-hopping seemed a natural occurrence.

Instead on this dark and direct LP, Beck offers what on the surface appears a structured and cohesive effort that barely tops 30 minutes.

While it might be relief for some after some sprawling efforts, for me it indicates that the well is running dry.

Danger Mouse's neo-soul psychedelica is imprinted all over this album - the swinging rhythms, the keyboard bass lines and of course the off-kilter beats.

But with a bleak, uneasy and muted vocal focus, this noir-ish affair feels like Beck being handed some Gnarls Barkley out-takes. Tellingly, the best track, Chemtrails, which builds on the back of an exploding drum roll before diverging into a guitar-fuelled outro, sees Danger Mouse noticeably absent.

But in handing over so much control, Beck has thrown out the baby with the bathwater. His sense of adventure, fun, unpredictability, humour and his own personal style have been lost here - lets hope he can reclaim it.