Lenny Kravitz is an interesting musician: despite the stabbings he's received throughout the years as being a retro-rock connoisseur incapable of anything original, he's still around. This is partly because, well, his musical template is classic rock and funk; and therefore if he sounds remotely close -- even sometimes -- to the wonderful period during the 70s he seamlessly emulates, he's placed himself above the moribund music we already suffer through. But that's the rub: he's good enough to stick around but not enough to be accepted; like the White Stripes, he reminds you of the joys of the original without entirely sounding like them, but take away this musical crutch, and he can't even break his fall with his arms. We admire him (for his good taste in past music), yet we revile him for doing nothing more than repeating it. Interestingly enough, he does have his own guitar tone; there is a definite strangeness in being able to know the difference between a Zeppelin-like riff played by no one in particular and a Zeppelin-like riff that is played by Lenny Kravitz. He's made an art form of sounding like himself sounding like others -- that's why he's still around, and why shite bands like Blink 1-82, Creed, et al, are not.
Okay, the album: this is one of many albums that I would classify as being of the 'taking-a-shit' variety, which is to say, it takes a shit roughly halfway through, transforming into a smatter of coagulated fester smitten in a public toilet bowl, never quite clean because of constant use. The lyrics are shallow, the music is blah and it's pretty awful. The first half, however, is pure indulgence. Like what I've said of Blur, Lenny wears his influences on his sleeve: Zeppelin, Grand Funk, Sly Stone, the Rolling Stones, Prince, etc. It's highly entertaining stuff, makes you bob your head up and down to his nifty rhythms and causes you to smile that someone still manages to play guitar solos. But don't mix this up with your old Floyd records. It's just a re-creation tie-dye tapestry, not the real thing. C-
