Tommy Lee: Never A Dull Moment : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Between last year's Motley Crue tell-all, his lengthy rap sheet and that infamous home video, we know more than we should about Tommy Lee. The follow-up to 1999's guest-heavy Methods of Mayhem offers smaller insights. Who knew that he liked David Bowie? Yet on his rap-metal homage to the icon, "Fame-02," Lee freestyles an expletive-riddled rhyme that suggests the original song's moral eludes him. Fame: "Do what the fuck that you want to do." That motto seemingly guides Never a Dull Moment. Throughout, Lee sings and plays most of the tracks himself and experiments with a bipolar range of songs, from string-laden ballads such as "Ashamed" to ragers like "Face to Face," on which he threatens to "bitch slap" a former friend (Kid Rock?). But just because one can doesn't mean one should. Sounding alternately like a drill sergeant and Keanu Reeves crooning in a faux-British accent, Lee lacks the musical identity to unify these disparate and, yes, frequently dull moments.

ROBERT CHERRY
(RS 897 - June 6, 2002)