A Sonic Bang Helps ‘Em Get Up and Dance

LENNY KRAVITZ

“Circus”

Virgin

* * * 1/2

Lenny Kravitz has a Led Zeppelin complex--which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When it comes to re-creating their heavy-bottomed, riff-driven sound, few can rival Kravitz’s multi-instrumental prowess. Call him the Wynton Marsalis of rock--not an unscrupulous thief of other people’s styles, but a young cat who aims at preserving the sound of a bygone era, when blues was the centering force and lyrics dealt with more than unfettered angst.

“Rock and Roll Is Dead” launches Kravitz’s fourth album with a sonic bang that leaves the speakers smoking. The underground spirit invoked by the song’s blustery riff winds its way into the eerie minor chord swell of the title track and the bone-crunching “Beyond the 7th Sky.” (As on such earlier tracks as “I Built This Garden for Us,” Kravitz does his God-fearing best with Christian references in both “God Is Love” and the more uptempo “Resurrection.”)

But it’s with the funkier tracks on the album--the gutbucket kicks provided by “Tunnel Vision” and “Thin Ice,” and the masterful, electric bossa-nova shuffle-step of “Don’t Go and Put a Bullet in Your Head”--that Kravitz reveals his true musical powers.

Sure, anybody can rock hard, but as Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix and George Clinton asked within their music, can you make people dance to it too? Lenny Kravitz can, and “Circus” is the perfect appetizer for the Kravitz project fans are really waiting for--his full-blown funk album.

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