AM and Shawn Lee have reached a level of acclaim and success on their previously separate paths – Lee as a funk soul instrumentalist of the “Talkin’ Loud” camp who somehow wrote Will Young’s hit ‘Happiness’ and AM as a kind of ambient folky vocalist who has somehow made a living licensing his songs to literally dozens upon dozens of middlebrow US TV shows. This unlikely pairing apparently bonded over a mutual adoration of vintage soundtracks and rare psych, eventually combining their talents to create Celestial Electric – Lee on beats and backgrounds, AM on the mic.

What a horrible record this is. Beginning with a fumble like the Matchbox-20-visit-an-alt-wine-bar white boy soul of ‘City Boy’ could be forgiven were it not immediately followed by the double downer of ‘Lonely Life’ – a cringingly unsexy meditation on, err, being lonely and then sometimes having sex, replete with a comedy oom-pa-pa drumbeat and “augmented” by tons of BBC sound effect archive wibbling, all overlaid with Mr M’s slick, sickly falsetto – and ‘Can’t Figure It Out’ (another inspiring title there), an at least tuneful if entirely gutless middle of the road meander into mellow, melodic softness. And for softness, read blandness.

We can all tell what they imagine this sounds like – a pair of James Bonds with espressos in one hand, a pack of Gitanes in the other infiltrating a ring of bored, sexually frustrated Euro-chicks whose evil powers can be quelled only by lashings and lashings of Galliano. The band not the drink. Or both. Whatever. It doesn’t sound like that, of course. The ideas of ourselves we have in our heads are rarely what others see, or in this case hear.

‘Dark Into Light’ features the lyric “What’s your name/Do you feel the same” which’ll definitely make you think. About nothing. It boasts, at least, a rather delightful waterfall guitar sound and delicate, precise production – but the song is plain boring. Not boring is the ridiculous, chew-your-own-ears-off horror of ‘Jackie Blue’. Not content with sounding like a bottom of the barrel ’70s TV theme tune it’s also one of those “I know a girl and this is what she does with her life and I disapprove and here’s my advice” songs. There are no worse songs than ones in which the singer lectures a character from the song. Especially when the lecture sounds like it’s being delivered by Jake from the Scissor Sisters. Absolute death trifle.

But wait, we’re yet to delve into ‘Promises Are Never Far From Lies’ which is akin to having jazzy nails stamped into your ear canals. Its shiny, shoddy “style” – and this applies across the board, to the whole fucking album – is as sonically unappealing as the eternal death screams of a robotic cat baby car alarm hybrid being forced between the jagged teeth of a vampiric, alzheimer’s-ridden Funkadelic.

“Waste my time/You waste my time” Mr. M says. Quite.

There are some bits when they sound like The Worst Of The Style Council (‘Somebody Like You’ which hilariously apes the riff from ‘Rock the Kasbah’), some that do the fake spy theme thing (‘The Signal’) and one where it’s a bit schmindie (the Kings Of Convenience if they went really really wrong of ‘Down The Line’, a song that musically mimics the visual experience of staring, forever, at a massive, eye-filling, blank, annoying piece of beige paper). ‘Callahan’ is a relief in that AM doesn’t sing on it and it’s funny too because it sounds like a really shoddy O’Neill’s pub band, while they are obviously imagining they were all in a Parisian café being mightily witty and not pathetic. All one can hope is that AM and Lee’s paths never cross again. Better they be safely out of the way doing their own thing than attempt to sabotage the real world with this dross.

Anyway, too much digression, here’s the skinny. You’re left with a taste in your mouth like you might have had a glass of flat carbonated water a few hours ago. It sticks in the throat and you’ll want to spit but don’t worry, for all the disgust it engenders, it fades quickly enough.