He's had the leather jacket longer than you've had backbone. Lenny Kravitz entered the Royal Arena with the guitar as an extension of his hip bone and sunglasses glued to his face. It was rock, it was retro, it was... a bit like being at a concert with a mirror image of yourself from 2002.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
There is nothing to put on the style. Lenny Kravitz watching still out as if he could date both your mother and your daughter -- with consent and charm. He's got the voice, the charisma and the band in the back. All that should make the whole thing explode.
But the concert in the Royal Arena remained an echo of something that was once sharp and horny, but which now felt... well-produced and a little too safe. We got the classics, of course. Fly Away, American Woman, Are You Gonna Go My Way — and the audience shouted along, as you do now when you have paid over 700 kroner for a ticket and still remember MTV.
It's not that it was bad. It just wasn't really dangerous either. They missed the unexpected. The sweaty nervousness. The thing where you think, 'What the hell is he doing now? ' Instead of, “I know this song.”
The new tracks were delivered with professional conviction, but audiences spent the time finding their beers or filming the old ones. And that is perhaps a symptom of the concert's greatest weakness: it had not something at stake. It was a greatest hits show disguised as a comeback.
Reflection
Lenny Kravitz is still cool. And that might be the problem, too. For the coolness was precisely what once made him dangerous. Now it has become neat. He's a legend -- and he knows it. But on this particular night, he had no surprise. To cripple his own image. Getting dirty.
3 out of 5 Apropos stars for style, energy and nostalgia -- and a quiet prayer that next time will be a little more imperfect.
