Prolific indie veteran Newton Faulkner kickstarted the campaign for his latest album in dramatic fashion last November, when he took a pair of clippers to his signature ginger dreadlocks live onstage at a gig in London. A commendable fundraising effort for the Teenage Cancer Trust, Faulkner’s extreme makeover marked the beginning of a new era for the now clean-shaven singer-songwriter, who, freed from the trademark sounds of his past, began looking ahead to his eighth studio album. An ambitious, eclectic project, Octopus blends a multitude of styles and genres, without ever doing any of them particularly well.

It starts off strongly. ‘Alright Alright Alright’, made in collaboration with Ukrainian pop duo Bloom Twins, is a fast-paced introduction, armed with a particularly endearing breakdown in the track’s latter stages. Despite this promising opener, the remainder of the project largely falls flat, at least until singer-songwriter Lissie and Cumbia experts Los Bitchos breathe some much-needed life into peppy pop song ‘Hunting Season’. There are catchy, inoffensive moments on the album, such as ‘Tic Tac Toe’ and ‘Better For Me’, both of which wouldn’t sound too out of place on 6 Music’s C List, though such songs are outnumbered by a glut of padded-out pop filler.

As endearing as the tale of Faulkner’s charitable chop turned sonic reinvention is, evidence here of such a transformation remains scarce. Faulkner is clearly not afraid of trying his hand at multiple genres, but Octopus is hindered by a lack of coherence and consistency. That both the album’s best tracks happen to be the only pair featuring other artists is rather damning, and perhaps indicative of an artist unsure of how he wishes to sound at this point in his career.

Newton Faulkner: Octopus is released by Cooking Vinyl on Friday 19 September.