PORTLAND, Maine — There’s not much that Spencer Albee hasn’t done in music in Maine over the last thirty years.
He broke out in the 1990s as a member of Rustic Overtones. Then he fronted bands. First there was Rocktopus, which morphed into As Fast As. Then came Spencer and the School Spirit Mafia, Bell Systems, and Palomino Motel. Along the way he did solo work as well as producing and writing with a wide variety of musicians.
Add it all up and it’s a formidable body of work, much of which is included in his new three-album, 57-song collection called “Time Machine: 2024-2000.” It represents what he thinks is the best of what he’s recorded over the last quarter century, a musical journey that unspools backwards from the present to the past.
When listening to the tracks and deciding what would make the cut for this retrospective, did he wish he could go back and change them, perhaps do a little tweak here and there?
“No. It’s a snapshot,” he said. “That’s where I was at. But if you listen backwards, you can probably—most definitely—identify the moment where I started going to therapy.”
“Are you proud of the music you have created over this period?” I asked.
“When I cull through the material and choose my favorites that I still have an attachment to—and try to listen to it as objectively as I can—I am proud of it,” he said.
“I just feel fulfilled in a weird way listening to it. Like, wow, I’ve done something. It hasn’t all been for nothing.”