I have to give Joji some credit for not being totally set in his ways. While his brand of alternative R&B might not be the most radical thing you’ve ever heard, he does go through lapses in concealing the itch he has to be the loon too crazy to be taken out in public, not the psycho of his YouTube former, but not a commoner either. This might be why he decided to make an album with ‘piss’ in the title. Piss in the Wind is an album of ambitions and desires mostly displayed in mild shoulder-rubbing with multiple forms of alternative music. It’s a little drab, not too fleshed-out, and Joji nailing his aspirations with the appropriate vocal or songwriting tact is, well, it’s just that, aspirational. The album goes through lengthy periods of tepidness, so tepid that you’ll probably end up enjoying even the shallowest of songs with hooks, simply because they actually have hooks – I’m looking at you, Hotel California. As for that aforementioned modest eccentricity, the album begins with a thick rage instrumental with a throbbing low-end courtesy of Pixelated Kisses, at odds with Joji’s gentlemanly singing, but the sound is gruelling. All effort on Sojourn goes into making the song as disorienting as possible, with noisy electronica and switch-ups in tempo – that’s what happens when you get Dylan Brady to produce. The most interesting decision of Joji’s is to make a dream pop/shoegaze song out of Love You Less. There is something missing from the texture – despite its attempt at the contrary, you’ll know immediately you aren’t listening to My Bloody Valentine if somebody played it for you – but the attempt is heartfelt, and the chorus is one of the most moving of the album; simple chords do the trick.

These highlights are scattered, and Piss in the Wind ends up giving us an unnecessary twenty-one tracks that sporadically allow insight into the madcap bubbling internally through Joji. He’s a bit of a tinkerer, but that side of him is as likely to produce a half-assed sub-two-minute non-song as it is a heavy pivot. His eccentricities could lead to something fun if he expands on them; his own filthy Frankenstein.

Best tracks – Love You Less – Sojourn.

Rating – 6 out of 10