An odd cove, Kid Loco – Jean-Yves Prieur – has been around for donkey’s years, flitting about the mild dance margins with his peculiarly Gallic blend of trip-hop, lounge jazz, polite turntablism, however you want to brand it. Full albums have appeared sporadically, tucked in between remixes and soundtrack efforts. It’s probably just as well – in 2011 at least, a long-player’s worth of sustained quality seems beyond him.

The ingredients all appear to be here; from the album’s name down to the two separate stabs at a title track, this would make sense as a concept album – most obviously an adventure sparked by gobbling hallucinogenic plant life (assuming that’s the belladonna we’re talking about). OK, getting off your tête isn’t the ideal route to cohesive work, but a handful of drugs never got in the way of an overlong concept piece, right? Whatever Prieur’s intentions, Confessions Of A Belladonna Eater falls short in both theme and sonic identity.

In a sense then, it’s a game of two halves. Only one half is much bigger than the other. The dominant, er, half is peppered with the lazy grooves of continental cafés, overpoweringly French with Gainsbourg swing on ‘The Land Of Broken Hearts’ and ‘Whatever Works’, and parping accordion on the two forboding but frustratingly blasé title tracks. This is all fair enough, what with Prieur being French and all, but it’s too much Gauloise filter tip and not enough throat-ripping Gitane. Sorry, clichés are invidious, even with the acute ‘e’.

When Prieur drags himself out of his slumber however, the results are pretty entertaining.’ The Morning After’ is fluid, successfully mixing Phoenix’s 70s FM sound with glockenspiel fresh (or slightly musty) out of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’ and an insistent, lugubrious slink that has something of Nick Cave’s ‘More News From Nowhere’. It’s pop, really, a relief from much of the smooth easy listening around it, and is matched by the quick-step groove of ‘The Night I Had A Smoke With C.B.’ which could slot into any decent Cornershop album. That’s proper praise in discerning quarters.

On these tracks pedestrian plod is shrugged off, replaced by actual effort, shaming the ludicrous second-rate acid jazz of, say, ‘My Daddy Waza’ or the vampy slouch of ‘Friends Of Mine’. The Loco vocals are a mixed blessing, their insouciance a happy match for the stoner stuff but a disadvantage on the the more livewire fare; they come into their own though on a cover of Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’ where honky tonk piano meets rolling guitar to smoky appeal.

It’s a fine balance, this marriage of flake-out and vitality, that only works here and there. When Confessions Of A Belladonna Eater stays off the shrubs and embraces the pep it’s good fun – it just rarely has the willpower.