| Let’s step back for a minute and
take a look at the arc of music’s orbit around pop culture: You’ll notice it
kind of passes through a 15-year cycle wherin the dominant attitude shifts from earnest to
camp to ironic and, eventually, back again to earnest. Arguably the last time when we were
in the so-called "earnest" phase was in the late-70s and early-80s, when the
rockers like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp enjoyed their critical and
commercial nadir.
Then along came Culture Club and Cyndi Lauper and Twisted
Sister, et al. You know the rest of the story.
So here we are 15 years on and it would appear, based on
evidence like the smashing success of the E-Street Band reunion tour, that pop’s
prevailing attitude could well be set to adopt an earthier, more honest air.
Kevin Lee will be in great position to reap the rewards of
such a movement if his supple, straightforward new EP, "Walk a Mile in My Shoes"
is any indication.
The way the title track kicks off the album, with its
classic barroom beat and insistent riff, will be unsettling to those of us who were weaned
on Nirvana and its progeny (not to mention hip-hop). But, odd as it seems, there is a
comforting sort of familiarity to this record, for those who seek it. This sort of comfort
- which pervades even Lee’s gritty, occasionally desperate wail – is the
album’s strength and sustains it in the odd moment when it falls flat.
For Lee, comparisons to the artists mentioned in the first
paragraph are completely inevitable, but he transcends that paradigm somewhat in the
album’s final (and, by far, best) track, "One Temptation." Tremulous,
expansive, string-drenched and anthemic, "One Temptation" starts on an acoustic
guitar and climaxes in a stadium. Epochal in spite of its relatively short running time
(5:10), it hints at Lee’s larger ambitions. Whether those ambitions are realized
depends largely on the public. But if they are not, Lee can rest assured that it
wasn’t his fault.
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