David Byrne & Fatboy Slim
Here Lies Love

David Byrne may be one of the coolest men to walk the Earth, but Fatboy Slim is certainly not. It sounds like an odd pairing, and it is - this is a messy affair that fails to showcase either musician's strength.

A new Fatboy Slim album was once greeted with a sense of fanfare and excitement. These days, those feelings have turned into trepidation and reservation, but Norman Cook has no one to blame but himself. His Brighton Port Authority album was an unmitigated disaster - a side project that should never have made it past the drawing board.

But when it was announced that the DJ was teaming up with David Byrne for an concept album based on, of all things, notorious former Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos, there was a mixture of morbid curiosity (at least he's teamed up with a musician of high calibre in Byrne) and sheer dread. Unfortunately, it's the latter that provides the overriding emotion here.

On one hand, there's the fact that there are a huge number of respected guest collaborators here - Santigold, Roisin Murphy, Steve Earle, Martha Wainwright and Tori Amos among them. On the other, very few of them make any discernible difference. In fact, the whole album is an uneven, unstable mess, flapping raggedly between gentle orchestral compositions, ridiculous drum 'n' bass-like beat and naff soul-pop.

Yet perhaps the main problem is its length. Was two discs (and 22 tracks) really necessary? The excessive running time means that the actual decent songs - Roisin Murphy's star turn on 'Don't You Agree', Kate Pierson's sassy vocals on the Talking Heads-esque 'The Whole Men', and Martha Wainwright's trembling songbird additions to the beautiful 'The Rose of Tacloban' - are watered down by the sheer blandness of their neighbouring tunes. 'Here Lies Love' sounded good on paper, sure - but on earphones, it just sounds like one great big missed opportunity.

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