It says a lot that "I'm like a fish with legs" is one of the least baffling lyrics to be found on Richard Ashcroft's latest musical attempt to sate his ego. Featuring a handful of respected session musicians and produced by hip-hop producer No I.D. (Kanye West, Jay-Z), United Nations of Sound is less hip-hop collective, more Ashcroft solo album with dated beats bolted on. So, the awfully titled Beatitudes starts with a simple drum tattoo before Ashcroft suffocates it with lashings of strings (always his default setting), while America and Are You Ready are weighed down by endless guitar noodling. This inability to assert restraint is shown most tellingly in the lyrics. Too often Ashcroft descends into mawkish over-sentimentality (Life Can Be So Beautiful), empty sloganeering (America), or worse, cod philosophy (literally every other song). There are flashes of the Ashcroft of old – She Brings Me the Music, Let My Soul Rest – but too much of United Nations of Sound feels like a vanity project gone horribly awry.