Street Faërie / Street Faerie

Former Different World actress and Lenny Kravitz musical protégé, Cree Summer addresses both her Canadian Indian roots and her oneness with earth (covering both the personal and universal obligations of her singer-songwriter role) on her debut album, Street Faerie. But even with those foregone topics in place, it all comes off sounding a little too much like hippie-dazed philosophizing caked in neo-psychedelic rhetoric. Producer Kravitz keeps his usual retrogazing to a minimum here, allowing Street Faerie to breathe in its own organic surroundings and to develop a style more reserved than on any of his own recordings. Summer herself ably blends R&B and alt-rock, yet the album excels in neither, eventually leaving its author, and the listener, to walk away with an indifferent shrug.