From the moment you see the album cover and the photographs that adorn the inner sleeve you'll know exactly what to expect from this, good old Lenny's, sixth album release. Yes, that's right, pictures of the singer/songwriter and super producer preening himself for you just as on any other Kravitz release indicate that the tunes contained within will - by and large - be of the retro guitar pop variety with added schmaltz.
At a time when nu-metal, camp pop and R 'n' B battle for ascendancy in the pop charts Lenny's brand of retro posturing, pseudo hippie lyrics and sentimental love ballads seem more irrelevant than ever. From the opening guitar chug of 'Battlefield Of Love' to the stagnant, staccato dirge of closer 'Let's Get High' there's very little on 'Lenny' that isn't a re-hash of former hits.
This does of course mean that there are plenty of inoffensive, melodic songs with sing-a-long choruses like the plaintive ballad 'Yesterday Is Gone (My Dear Kay)' with the rather ironic insight: "You can't go on living in the past the one thing constant is that there is always change". Similarly the slightly overblown orchestral rocker 'Stillness Of Heart' sounds like the sort of tune Richard Ashcroft might attempt to pen on his next record.
Despite this, Lenny does produce fleeting moments of progression and indeed confirms that his creativity has reached a semi-colon rather than a full stop. The dark beats and orchestral sweeps of 'You Were In My Heart' pay respect to Massive Attack whilst remaining resolutely Kravitz, and the sparse, tense electro judder of 'Believe In Me' is quite sublime.
Overall then 'Lenny' could never be described as a bad Lenny Kravitz record. The fact, however, remains that the sight of a seventy year-old Kravitz posing seductively on his fifteenth album release is an undesirable though not wholly improbable prospect.
