The idea of every Southerner’s favorite jam band releasing an album of reggae covers, dub remixes, and alternate versions may seem bizarre, but only if you’ve been a fairweather Mule fan of late, missing their live cover of Al Green’s forgotten album track “I’m a Ram” and skipping over their own “Unring the Bell” off of last year’s studio album High and Mighty. Thus, the cleverly-titled Mighty High seems like an intriguing detour, at the very least. And it is, at first. It’s just not much of a Mule album.

The opening red herring, a studio version of “Ram,” hints otherwise, Warren Haynes’ squalling wah spilling out all over the Kingston beat until the group pulls out some Bad Company-style balls, blown up arena size, on the chorus. Then, however, along comes Jamaican legend Willi Williams (“Armagideon Time”) to tackle “Rebel With a Cause,” essentially a solo track with Haynes sitting in. After that, he disappears almost completely, popping in mainly to spice up a version of “The Shape I’m In” that sounds more like a dub version of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” than anything by the Band, and a similarly mellow groove on the New Orleans funk instrumental “Outta Shape.” Too often, Mule fans are left with oddities like the seven-minute version of the Stones’ “Play with Fire”—featuring Michael Franti preaching to the choir about Warren’s greatness, as if he were an unknown rapper—or no less than three alternate, barely-recognizable versions of “Unring the Bell.” They finally remember themselves on “So Ram, So Wrong,” which, as the title suggests, mixes “Ram” and the High and Mighty track “So Weak, So Strong” too spooky and yet typically ballsy effect. If nothing else, Mighty High proves that Matt Abts and Andy Hess can do a solid Sly and Robbie imitation. But when a band as talented and idiosyncratic as this takes a musical journey, shouldn’t it bring itself along?