Album Review: Roy Davis Jr. - Chicago Forever (Ubiquity)

Writer: Oliver Scott

Despite being the third largest city in the USA, the Chicago music scene has long benefited from a relative lack of media attention compared to the city’s East and West coasts, allowing the scene to develop without the same level of pressure afforded to its coastal counterparts. If anything, Chicago’s geographical, cultural and commercial importance as a city at the crossroads of North, South, East and West has lead to a long history of musical innovation.

Chicago Forever, the new album by Roy Davis Jr. is a terrifically eloquent summing up of the artist’s feelings for his hometown and the diverse nature of its musical heritage. Best known in the UK for his collaboration with Peven Everett in Gabriel, which remains one of the most influential dance records of the last ten years, Davis' new album is a brave yet successful attempt to connect the disparate strands of music from the Windy City. If the Masters at Work's sound screams New York City and with that city takes a magpie approach which bundles together disco, house, hip hop and crucially Latin influences, Roy Davis Jr.'s vision of his spiritual home is an altogether funkier and blacker affair.

The album kicks off in massive and uplifting style with If You Wanna, featuring Terry Dexter, with strings soaring before flowing neatly into I Know What You're Thinking, which features vocals from the great Ayro. If somewhat controversial to say it, his voice is a throwback to the blue-eyed soul of the likes of Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs, amongst others. Combined with wicked keyboards, this tune has Summer 2004 written through it like a stick of seaside rock.

As befitting the wide-ranging concept of the album, Davis turns down the tempo for Wonderland, its atmospheric singing and crisp, funky beats making this one really count. If Nu Roots is low-key but perfectly named, the fantastically uplifting vocals and sweeping orchestration in Heavenly Father sound not unlike one of those gospel stompers Masters at Work chuck our way every so often, leaving it a certain winner. Sticking with the house theme, My Soul is Electric will rock any dance floor. "My daddy makes soul music, so get down" says Roy's son Caleb before U Give U Take, a charmingly off beat reggae/funk confection and Slow it Down (for the steppers) pays tribute to yet another part of the Chicago musical jigsaw. It's all good, it really is. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again - life moves pretty fast, if you don't turn around once in a while, you might miss it." So says the title character in ‘Ferris Bueller's Day Off’, looking down at the city from the top of a Chicago skyscraper. Add music to that equation, and there's no danger of that with Chicago Forever playing on your stereo.

RELATED LINKS:
Ubiquity - record label home to Roy Davis Jr.
Discography



Buy Roy Davis' Chicago Forever album at Amazon UK (CD) | US (CD). .



PUBLISHED: 18 September 2004

RELEASE DATE: 20 September 2004 (UK) | 14 September 2004 (US)

More Reviews