Captain’s log:
“…the thrill I got from hearing this album all the way through was deeper and more satisfying than anything I had ever experienced…I walked out of the studio on air and soared through the rest of the day. I was really in orbit!” — William Shatner, 1968

Cack then, but not as we know it. Fruity, nutty and satisfying.

We are in unexplored space, somewhere beyond shit, kitsch and pretension. The concept is to set Shakespearean dramatic monologues to music (nothing too overreaching — King Henry V “once more into the breach”, Hamlet “to be or not..” and Romeo and Juliet “but soft, what light…?”), throw in a few narrations of psych pop songs twelve months too late to be of the moment (Mr. Tambourine Man, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), blend with some epic doggerel by some no-mark poet, and pair each set piece so as to “unfold multiple perspectives of the same subject, like the two sides of a coin, tension and resolution” — Producer’s note. All James T. Kirk mannerisms are present and correct: stop-start, slow-fast diction [“tension and resolution” anyone?]; intonation and volume building up to crash at the end of each sentence with a porcine bellow; moments of lip-biting wonder where Jim is just…well, in awe of it all. 

After the full warped speed opener of William giving it righteous welly as King Henry, the album peaks early with the highlight: Mr. Tambourine Man. This has a quite good actually arrangement of girl chorus providing the “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man”, the hook around which Jim exhorts all and sundry in the jingle jangle morning. The coup de grace is the final primal scream signifying “total psychopathic subservience”. There’s also a tambourine being whacked throughout. 

Plenty of belly laughs, then. There remains a sneaking suspicion that everyone in the studio was spliffed up and secretly pissing themselves, everyone that is, except William who is in sphincter-tighteningly earnest. It is this fundamental naivete, our Jim’s utter obliviousness of the turd steaming under his nose which raises the album to the level of greatness: transcending novelty and transforming poo into gold.