WILLIAM SHATNER
Has Been
(Shout! Factory)
***

Do you think it would be a good idea to have William Shatner, Ben Folds and Henry Rollins collaborate on a three-minute beatnik/punk musical rant with Hawaii Five-O percussion and weird Adrian Belew guitar noises? If so, this record is especially for you! Essentially a new collaboration between Shatner and Folds with a bizarre supporting cast, the disc kicks off with Joe Jackson joining Shatner for the album's only cover tune, Pulp's “Common People.” As exemplified in that song's bombastic 100-plus-member choir and raw rock riffs, producer Ben Folds successfully captures the overblown melodrama that made Shatner's 1968 Transformed Man album such a fun pop-culture artifact.

Even more impressive is Folds' mastery of the seemingly impossible task of having self-deprecating fun with the material, yet simultaneously treating it with legitimacy and respect. Shatner and Folds go somewhere beyond mere irony here, managing to be both vulnerably intimate and completely asinine at the same time. The silly songs are made funnier by the intense seriousness of their delivery, while some more genuinely serious sentiments about mortality and relational failure are made unusually unsettling by their campy treatment. Some of the collaborations are more effective than others, and therefore the album lags in a few spots. Still, it's an interestingly diverse and ambitious project.

(Originally published in The Cleveland Free Times, October 6, 2004)