Ricky Fante
Van Hunt
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The January 2000 release of the second D’Angelo album, Voodoo (Virgin), unofficially kicked off a movement that had been percolating for a number of years–and that’s if you ignore Prince and forgotten voices like Terence Trent D’Arby, who presaged many of its musical concerns by a decade or two. While Voodoo wasn’t the first soul album to acknowledge the ubiquity of hip-hop, it was arguably the first to make sense of it without being shackled by its instrumental limitations. Roots drummer Ahmir Thompson kept time on that record, giving the music a metronomic heartbeat and holding together the impressively loose and notably live-sounding performances by bassist Raphael Saadiq, guitarist Charlie Hunter, and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. The multitracked layers of restrained vocals were a stark contrast to the forgettable ballads that then dominated the charts. The album was too personal a statement by its smoldering singer to truly function as a blueprint for a new movement, but it opened the door for artists who felt “soul” music should retain some connection with its history.
But this year a couple of singers broke rank to reconnect wholeheartedly with the classic soul of the 60s and 70s. Ricky Fante, a Baltimore-bred singer now living in LA, might be the first artist in years to truly deserve the neo-soul tag. His recent debut album, Rewind, makes no bones about cribbing from the hard soul of the Stax Records era, and while the eponymous debut of Van Hunt–raised in Dayton, Ohio, and now based in Atlanta–lacks such a narrowly defined model, he pays more than lip service to past greats like Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, and Sly Stone.
Hard-rock riffs pulse through the album’s hooky opener, “Dust,” which if not for Hunt’s liquid expressiveness and slinky groove, wouldn’t sound out of place on a Living Colour tune. He breezes through “Seconds of Pleasure,” a slow-burn ballad stoked by fiery guitar licks, muted horn charts, and sparse strings, with an easy, Mayfield-esque falsetto. He channels George Clinton on “Hello, Goodbye,” while “Anything (To Get Your Attention)” sounds like a lost hit by Me’Shell Ndegeocello, and “Her December” bounces along with subtle Latin accents, evoking the early 70s best of Stevie Wonder.
Van Hunt performs at 9 PM on Friday, August 13, at the Harold Washington Cultural Center. Tickets are $30. See the music listings for more information.
