|
 The
Major Lift
By
Erik Hage
For
the past 20 years, Lenny Kravitz has been churning
out albums packed with style and gestures but relatively thin
on substance. I wouldn’t exactly say that It Is Time for
a Love Revolution shifts the whole paradigm, but there
is a whole lot to recommend it, and it seems somewhat less
anemic than much of his previous work.
“Bring
it On” borrows from the Jimmy Page riff book and filters that
through Velvet Revolver sensibilities, adding up to a tough-as-nails
guitar assault that rises and falls on Kravitz’s blood-simple
lyrical revelations (“It’s getting heavy/But I’m ready/To
take on this world and rock steady/So come on, bring it on”).
Kravitz has never been much of a lyricist, but here it works:
The blunt lyrical expressions are simply flotsam in the guitar
roar. (Led Zeppelin seem to be a common reference point on
the album.)
 Then
again, the Kravitz Principle holds that for every several
“Are You Gonna Go My Way”-style riff-fests, there must be
an obvious and smarmy love ballad. That distinction goes to
“I’ll Be Waiting,” which possesses pretty much the same lyrics
you would expect if you sent home a creative-writing class
of 16-year-olds to compose a poem around that theme. To make
matters worse, the execution is pure power-ballad. (You can
hear it in the back of Lenny’s mind: “This could be my ‘Can’t
Fight This Feeling.’ ”)
Nevertheless, since (in my mind at least) there is little
rhyme or reason for Kravitz’s longevity, this is a surprisingly
solid album. He’s best when the guitars wail, though, and
not when he’s gone all dewy. And if you really want to know
how deplorable the State of the Union is, consider the fact
that every recording artist and their mother has an antiwar
song, even the Krav, who obtusely opines in “Back in Vietnam,”
“We’re going to fly over the world inside a giant eagle/We
do just what
we
want and don’t care if it isn’t legal/We’re on a horse that
is high, we think we’re so damn regal.” Take that John Ashcroft:
That’s where your eagles fly.
 On
the R&B side of the tracks, Def Jam Records and producer
Rodney Jerkins have taken an interesting approach with Janet
Jackson: Instead of running from her wardrobe malfunction,
they have made that aspect the raison d’etre for Discipline,
her first album with the label. The title track has her engaging
in a little awkward S&M wordplay, while she claims to
be “heavy like a first-day period” amid the techno gymnastics
of the first single, “Feedback.” (Odd and hardly titillating
stuff, to be sure.) This is a genre ruled by name producers,
with the singers often an afterthought; nevertheless, Jackson’s
limber and sassy vocal approach shows that there is a world
of difference between plugging a real woman into that equation
versus a troubled little girl—for example, try this back-to-back
with Britney’s recent star-producer-studded LP.
Unlike Jackson, English singer Natasha Bedingfield
stamps more of her own personality on her new album, Pocketful
of Sunshine; like Jackson, she is trolling the R&B/pop
waters. Bedingfield’s vision is cheerier, though, and she
steers clear of the hypersexualized hijinks. There is nothing
here as distinctive or as likable as her breakaway hit “These
Words,” and the album is a bit less soulful and original than
2005’s Unwritten. Nevertheless, this is a strong effort
and a refreshing change of pace from the desperately sleazy
pimping or American Idol Stepford-children, jazz-hands
bullshit that characterizes most of her American counterparts.
The title track is relatively straight-ahead but well-executed
R&B pop, while “Love Like This,” despite featuring reggae
pop star Sean Kingston, is much of the same. Still, there’s
a levity and real emotional sense of feel that sets this album
ahead of the pop-soul pack.
 Jack
Johnson is known for a similar groovy lightness, but on
Sleep Through the Static he reaches for darker, less
paradisiacal regions. Much like Lenny Kravitz, he’s not feeling
so good about the world, so he’s decided to make a statement.
But even Johnson’s most apocalyptic and bleak visions seem
to bounce like sun dapples on the morning surf. And on the
title track, when he’s offering up harsh, phantasmagoric platitudes
(“Just show your teeth and strike the fear/Of God wears camouflage,
cries at night and drives a Dodge”), it doesn’t sound too
far afield from the Curious George soundtrack (unless
one listens closely). This album is supposed to be a departure,
but it is pretty much another prototypical Jack Johnson record.
So if that’s your bag . . .
Sheryl
Crow has had one of those Tom Petty-like careers, one
that has kept her in the pop zeitgeist while remaining critically
unassailable (relatively). A lot of this has to do with the
fact that, like Petty, she writes a whole lot of good songs
and occasionally an outstanding one. And she’s done it again,
offering up an emotionally rigorous, well executed and strongly
written album with Detours. There are lots of biographical
contexts one could throw at the reader here—her bout with
breast cancer, her failed relationship with Lance Armstrong—but
the real story is of a truly blue-chip artist. She’s still
making strong albums and still doing it under her own steam.
“Love Is Free” has a Phil Spector-like girl-group bounce,
while the heart-wrenching “Shine Over Babylon” picks up on
a favorite reference point—late-’60s Rolling Stones acoustic
balladry—while also nodding to her earliest efforts. (That
could be courtesy of producer Bill Bottrell, who also helmed
her 1993 breakout, Tuesday Night Music Club.) Crow
also is not afraid to get raw and stark, such as on the acoustic-guitar-and-voice
beauty “God Bless This Mess” and the grim, personal “Make
It Go Away (Radiation Song).” Crow is simply a  contemporary
classic.
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