As baffling as that opening paragraph may initially seem, it’s a mere tickle of oddness next to the backhanded slap that is Beck covering The Velvet Underground and posting the recordings on his website. They’re part of a larger experiment in which the restless musical waif works with a rotating group of musicians to “reinterpret” classic albums – beginning with The Velvet Underground and Nico. There’s two more planned for the series and if this is anything to go by, they’ll be notable for their kamikaze-like courage and utter failure.

JUDGED! But not really, because Beck has failed at an impossible task – he was trying to erect a monument of mist – which makes the fact he tried in the first place all the more impressive. At the core of this problem is the fact that Lou Reed (lead singer of the Velvet Underground) lived the sort of life that made angels fall from the sky in envy and dread.

He sang with the reckless, strained delivery of somebody sitting on a hand grenade, but quite enjoying how it felt. When he told you he could “sleep for a thousand years”, his voice dragged itself along the floor, laden down with the weight of last night’s excesses. His voice alternated between the silky smoothness of the strange body he’d woken up next to and the broken shards of the syringe lying beside the bed. It’s the voice of the Velvet Underground, the only voice it could have had.

Beck does not have this voice. Beck’s voice is endlessly curious -  fifteen seconds after playing Modern Guilt and Midnite Vultures and his voice is peering behind your curtains and holding up the poker asking what it’s used for. The darkness in Beck is disappointment, a need for the world to be better than it is. Lou Reed could not have sung Gamma Rays because Lou Reed was never curious. Sex and drugs were his muse and the world beyond obscured by the haze.

Beck’s version of Venus in Furs is all words no feeling – a teleprompt set to music. None of which means it isn’t worth your time, or at least your curiosity. Have a peek around the curtains, see what you find. It might just be Lou Reed singing Barry Manilow. Stranger things have now happened.