Lenny Kravitz – “Raise Vibration” (2018)
This Rolling Stone review of Lenny Kravitz’s new album comes from Kory Grow, dated Sept. 7, 2018…
Lenny Kravitz Lends His Voice to the Resistance
Lenny Kravitz gets angry in only the most Lenny Kravitz way possible: with a high-pitched “hoooo,” some funky bass and his typically über-passionate vocal delivery. Nearly every track on his 11th album, Raise Vibration – at least those that aren’t his signature love songs – seems like he intended it to be an anthem for resistance in the Trump era. “Who Really Are the Monsters?” is a noticeably Prince-like electro-funk jam that finds Kravitz singing “The war won’t stop as long as we keep dropping bombs” and “Start communicating.” The gentle piano ballad “Here to Love” is a plea for unity (“There’s no more segregation/When you’ve seen the light”) with a catchy, urgent melody and one of his most striking vocal performances in recent years. And “It’s Enough” is a slow-building soul number that owes an obvious debt to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” both in terms of groove and theme, as he questions, “What’s that going down in the Middle East?/Do you really think it’s to keep the peace?” His message throughout is to question authority. Read the rest of this entry »
The Beat Patrol 