Collaborative guru John Carroll Kirby doesn't quite match his past on solo outing My Garden

From Solange to Moses Sumney; Blood Orange to Alex Cameron and Frank Ocean, the LA pianist has lent his witchy keys to some of recent years’ most significant albums. But some pieces work best as part of a whole. Alone on this record, Kirby displays none of the romance of Solange, cool of Blood Orange or the wit suggested by his work with Alex Cameron; rather these are nine jazz songs so laid back, they’re almost asleep.

Cameron is the closest reference point - these songs certainly seem to come from the same chintzy, 80s world as the Australian’s rogues gallery of sleazebags - except while Cameron apes the radio-anthems of that era, Kirby makes music his characters would listen to in a lift. These tracks are dominated by his signature lounge piano, playing light and repetitive riffs, while accompanied by a familiar palette of marimba, bongos and 808s - and that’s about as exciting as it gets.

Light and unchallenging music like this could perhaps be posited as escapism in this anxious time, an easy-going near-ambient record from a pre-anxiety age, but put these songs on in the background and watch them induce anxiety. Motifs like the endless, plodding core of “Arroyo Seco” make its four minute runtime feel like forty, quite the opposite of taking you to another place. The vamping “San Nicolas Island” has the shimmering synths of Dan Loptin’s recent Uncut Gems score, but while that style aped personality-devoid, commercial ambience to soundtrack the shattering of its protagonists money-hungry fantasy, My Garden simply is that music.

It’s hard to be too angry. After all, YouTube study-music streams are filled by this kind of inanity those are watching by thousands, but from Kirby, an accomplished pianist and musical director, this album seems like a bizarre choice. To have your own name most associated with those of other musicians must be a drag, but if that’s the case: why make your debut album so utterly forgettable?