What does a cross between the indie stylings of The Shins and the inventive brilliance of producer Brian ‘Danger Mouse’ Burton sound like? “Pop!”, according to my beamingly simple iPod, but the result is both more complex and less fun than that implies.

Shins frontman James Mercer and Danger Mouse met at a music festival in 2004, found they were mutual fans, and finally pencilled in the time to collaborate late last year. (I imagine after sacking half his band and ditching his record label, Mercer looked at his diary and realised that ooh, actually he did have a bit of free time.)

And the result? It’s listenable, it’s good, it’s melodic, it’s... too easy to damn with faint praise. Opening track The High Road is fantastic, a mix of retro soulful melody and ultramodern bleeps and noises. “It’s ok,” this track says, “this album isn’t just him out the Shins trying to be cool.” But after a promising start the album becomes a comfortable love-in, a soothing aural pillow that draws on everything from The Cure and The Beta Band to mariachi bands and The Beach Boys, but doesn’t do anything with them.

At its best, Mercer’s fey vocal delivering dark lines about “the dead mouths it costs to be alive” combined with Danger Mouse’s beats creates something just as fresh and exciting as you’d hope the unlikely pair would make. But too much of it drifts along in a vaguely shoegazey way – and at only 37 minutes, it should grab you from start to finish.

Final tracks Mongrel Heart and The Mall & Misery both have an uneasy, off-kilter feel with a pulsing rhythm finally injecting a sense of urgency and menace into the album’s dying minutes. We’re left with an album that never quite rises to the heights of either musician’s output, but hints at what could have been. Fingers crossed their next effort takes more risks, and explores the intriguing corners this album peers into rather than the more straightforwardly indie path it largely treads.