Lenny Kravitz didn't reinvent the wheel for his eighth album--hardly a surprise from an artist who's long been accused of filtering the music of decades past through his own discerning muse. Kravitz is still clearly more interested in crowd pleasing than fishing for rock critic accolades, whether seasoning the rollicking "Bring It On" with shimmering doses of Anishka Shankar's sitar, or coloring "Good Morning" with Beatles-esque harmonic flourishes as did ELO long before him. The openly proselytizing "If You Want It" sets his praises of Jesus to a forceful mix of early Led Zepplin acoustic atmospherics and Jimmy Page-ish riffs, a formula that's escaped too many other Creed-obsessed Christian rockers. The layered vocals 'n' guitars of the ambitious sprawl "Long Sad Goodbye" are too defiantly bluesy to be merely chalked up as echoing Queen – or is it Muse? – while the funky groove of "Dancin' Til Dawn" would've done J. Geils proud. With Kravitz playing virtual one man band on most of the tracks, it's an album that again argues he's an encyclopedic master of primal rock rhythms and hooks. And, like his best work, this is a collection where form often willfully trumps function. --Jerry McCulley