Albee is painting an optimistic face on the future of alternative. It's hard to believe that Albee's pop gloryfest genius has to vie for radio airplay against riff wasteland pirates like Creed or The Offspring. Albee has a musical vitality, a fresh kind of charm that nowadays is hard to come by. I cannot get enough of this album, even close to 30 repetitions later. Spencer Albee is on the verge of a kind of stylish pop nirvana here.
Pop is fun again.
Arranger Jaz Coleman has opened the floodgates for outsiders, those in other avenues of art and music, to take a stab at unraveling the web, of mystique, of truths, that the original musicians have crafted in their day. Morrison's music has always been a spiritual journey, but in this incarnation it has turned ghostly reflective on the last century, and the last century's mankind. Respectfully reinterpreting the pieces, Coleman, Kennedy and company re-assemble the thoughts and musical ideas, flexing and soaring within them, but still polish the original, core essence of the songs. The songs are allowed to touch us in new ways now, or for the first time. There is no pretension or trickery behind this second sighting of the Doors' music, this is core, the inner soul, if you will, of what the artists may have envisioned, only in an orchestral medium.