Mike Skinner has spent the better part of his career trying to distance himself from the “lawless lad adrift in pub culture” themes that permeated his first couple records, even though that commonplace, everyman lyrical approach connected him with an astounding number of workaday fans whose lager-filled nights were finally given a proper soundtrack. With Computers And Blues, purportedly his fifth and final release under The Streets moniker, Skinner has managed to withdraw nearly completely from the regular society that once embraced him, retreating deeply and darkly into the endless amounts of cyber-based technology available to all of us, crafting a decidedly modern but ultimately soulless farewell in the process.

There are only scant fragments of Skinner that are revealed within these pensive, chorus-driven new tracks, while a majority of the numbers are contemplative memories of a simpler time before everything went mad. And while the beats are consistently inventive and lively, Skinner’s lyrics and rhyme schemes are mostly lifeless and quite pedestrian, and he ultimately leans far too heavily on catchy but far too repetitive choruses that never fully deliver, leaving these songs limping towards whatever finish-line Skinner has imagined for himself.

The dissonant, abrasive siren call at the start of ‘Outside Inside’ is meant to be startling, perhaps a wake-up call to a fan base that has slept on the Streets as of late. As Skinner repeats the tricky phrase at the heart of the track, “The world is outside, but inside warm, inside informal, outside stormy, inside normal,” it becomes clear just how withdrawn Skinner has become, comfortably receding to the things that matter most to him, while giving the sense that writing about his life has become more of a chore than he’d like. And, if revealing this much of himself is indeed going through a personal type of hell, “Keep going!” he insists emphatically on the lead-single ‘Going Through Hell.’ No one has really missed the nasally chirp of the Music’s Rob Harvey, but here he is on the chorus, like nails on a chalkboard, dragging the rather run-of-the-mill track straight down with him.

And, while getting high on the roof of someone’s car as you gaze up at the stars sounds pleasant enough, ‘Roof Of Your Car’ ultimately lacks the type of storytelling depth to build a song around. As does consistently being confused by other people to the point where even Google lets you down and leaves you isolated (‘Puzzled By People’). It just seems that Skinner is grasping desperately at his surroundings in search of a muse, hoping that something, anything can inspire him, even, regrettably, Facebook status updates on the horrid ‘OMG,’ a song that immediately sounds quite dated and trite. These repeatedly lightweight catalysts invariably can’t carry a song very far, which is perhaps why Skinner relies so heavily on mechanical choruses to pad out a track until it stretches for three minutes and he can finally call it a day.

It’s hard to be overly critical of tracks as boldly personal as ‘Blip On A Screen’ and ‘Trying To Kill M.E.,’ but even the intimate, revelatory subject matter can’t save songs that don’t have much creative spirit or much of a soul to begin with. Skinner’s obviously on his way out the door at this point, and even though he’s speaking tenderly of his unborn child, the track still comes off as rather cold and distant. And by the time Skinner compares the exploits of the Streets (which, to most people, would be an exhilarating, satisfying experience) to a mundane, stuffy office job on the stodgy swansong ‘Lock The Locks,’ you can tell that he’s been ready to turn out the lights on this part of his career for quite some time, while shifting his focus towards some challenging new endeavor that will hopefully bring him joy and a sense of fulfillment than was apparently lacking with the Streets.