Like its cover art, Lenny Kravitz\u2019s 11th album opts for a sun-drenched vibe, offering pleasant lyrical platitudes and familiar sounds for a comfort-food love-filled day of relaxation. <\/p>\n
Not that the disc is easy listening by any means, but its messages are of the universal sort that Kravitz has traded in for many years. From a summer anthem to an ode to his mother to non-specific pleas to love each other, Kravitz writes about everything and nothing all at once, offering only \u201cvibrations of peace, love, and unity,\u201d according to a prerelease statement.<\/p>\n
In 2019, some might roll their eyes at such a corny sentiment, just as they did in 1971 with the \u201cI\u2019d Like To Buy The World A Coke\u201d theme during the Vietnam War. \u201cThere\u2019s no room for hate \/ We are just one human race \/ We must rise above \/ We are here to love\u201d is a sample lyric (from the piano ballad \u201cHere To Love\u201d), and most of the album follows suit. How you feel about the state of the country, and whether that message of unity appeals to you, will dictate how you feel about this disc at any given moment.<\/p>\n
So it comes down to the music, and while the criticisms of Kravitz have been long and deep since the early \u201890s, it\u2019s clear by now that he has found his own blend of classic rock, pop, funk and soul. And where most of Kravitz\u2019s output post-Lenny <\/i>has run together in a blur, there are some late-career standouts here worth hearing for Kravitz (or Prince, or Michael Jackson) fans. \u201cLow\u201d is a highlight, taking its time to ease into a midtempo funk beat and Kravitz alternating between his low and high register, punctuated with some Jackson-inspired \u201cHoo!\u201ds, a great bassline and swelling synthesizers in the background.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho Really Are The Monsters\u201d is new ground for Kravitz, a kind of electro-funk hybrid with spoken-word verses, a cool guitar solo followed by a steel drum solo (!), a reprise of the verse\/chorus, and then an extended saxophone solo to close the piece. It\u2019s the most ambitious thing Kravitz has done in years, and along with \u201cLow\u201d is easily the coolest thing he\u2019s released since at least 2008\u2019s Love Revolution<\/i>, if not before. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Enough\u201d is a beast, a languid yet catchy eight-minute groove that reminds me of the best parts of Stevie Wonder\u2019s epics on Songs In The Key Of Life<\/i>, but with hints of Prince, Marvin Gaye, and Kravitz\u2019s own long history. It\u2019s not a song he could have pulled off in 1999, but here, it\u2019s a darn good centerpiece and one of the few times the lyrics dip into protest territory. And once Kravitz has said what he needs to, he devotes the final three to a jam with tubular bells, a rubbery bassline, and a trumpet solo, before coming back in for a final verse. Oh, and this was the first single from the album, which is a ballsy choice.<\/p>\n
The title cut does a twin vocal\/guitar pairing but gets old fast and \u201cHere To Love\u201d is lovely but unmemorable, while \u201cJohnny Cash\u201d intercuts a story of meeting Cash with Kravitz\u2019s memory of losing his mother (actress Roxie Roker, for whom Kravitz\u2019s record label is named). It\u2019s musically fine and rather personal, about the only time Kravitz goes this route on the record, which is a welcome change from all the \u201clove everyone bro\u201d pablum elsewhere. \u201c5 More Days \u2018Til Summer\u201d is better than its title suggests, falling into \u201870s camp but \u2013 if you ignore the lyrics and the cheerleaders \u2013 offering a driving beat and a good guitar solo. I feel like this song could have been put to better use with better lyrics, but I haven\u2019t won four Grammys in a row, so what do I know?<\/p>\n
It is worth noting, as always, that Kravitz not only wrote, produced and arranged all the songs but also plays pretty much every instrument, with help from Craig Ross on some guitar parts and the outside string section (which Kravitz also arranged). Little of the instrumentation sounds electronic save maybe for the beat of \u201cI\u2019ll Be Inside Your Soul\u201d and the overdriven fuzz of \u201cMonsters,\u201d meaning that this is Kravitz\u2019s singular vision and statement of purpose. It\u2019s not always cool, it\u2019s not always what we need to hear, but it\u2019s uniquely his, and it\u2019s a pretty good album. If only the lyrics were as creative and engrossing as the music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":33734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6352],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-45555","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lenny-kravitz","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45555"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}