William Shatner approaches his recording career from the perspective of an actor: he's not driven to say something but give him a good role and he'll show up at your studio.
Cleopatra Records and producer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist/general mastermind
Billy Sherwood -- perhaps best-known as a member of a latter-day '90s incarnation of Yes -- did come up with a good role for
Shatner on 2013's
Ponder the Mystery. They had him, well, ponder the mystery of life to the sound of old-fashioned prog rock, a canny move that acknowledged the advancing age of the former Captain Kirk along with his deep associations with sci-fi.
Ponder the Mystery seizes upon this vein of Shatnerdom, nearly burying his inherent hamminess beneath the glistening gloss of analog synthesizers and some serious shredding by the likes of
Steve Vai,
Mick Jones,
Vince Gill,
Edgar Froese, and
Zoot Horn Rollo. While
Has Been,
Shatner's 2004 collaboration with
Ben Folds, played off the unintentional camp of the
Transformed Man,
Ponder the Mystery acknowledges the silliness but never celebrates it; there's a sincerity here -- a sincerity that was largely missing from
Seeking Major Tom, his 2011 collection of covers for
Cleopatra -- that brings this album closer to the
Transformed Man, where it never was clear what was real and what was fake. It adds mystery to a record that's all about enigmas, and, when combined with
Sherwood's clever aural interpretation of
Roger Dean's album art, it makes for a record that's more enjoyable than it has any right to be. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
![USA [40th Anniversary Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0633367401229_p0_v4_s90x140.jpg "USA [40th Anniversary Edition]")
![Little Broken Hearts [Deluxe Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0602455059796_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Little Broken Hearts [Deluxe Edition]")
![Marshall Crenshaw [40th Anniversary Expanded Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0634457071797_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Marshall Crenshaw [40th Anniversary Expanded Edition]")
