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Down Here
04/20/2000 6:24 PM, Yahoo! Music
Ken Micallef
Is Tracy Bonham really Lenny Kravitz in drag? She favors the same sludgy
brand of rock bombast as Kravitz, the King Of Retro, and she seems almost as
preoccupied and full of self-hipness.
Her fourth album, following Trail Of A Dust Devil, starts out roaring like a lioness. "Freed" unfolds gently, Tracy proclaiming, "I hardly love for fear of losing/I'll hardly lose, but I'm not loving, till I'm free." Over a middle-eastern (read Zeppelin) melody, guitars do a tilt-a-whirl of chord stretching and
background vocals murmur ominously. Then Lenny MKII kicks in with "Behind
Every Good Woman," a raunchy rocker about women who "Shame shame for the
rooster/Hi five for the hen."
It gets cornier, songs like "You Don't Know Me"
and "Fake It" coming on hard and heavy, but are pale studies in bad-girl
attitude. By Down Here's end, Tracy is singing over trip-hop string quartets,
anticipating that Unplugged set that will never come.
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