Leanne Faine & Favor – Serve the Lord

Leanne Faine & Favor
Serve the Lord
Music Makers Recordings/Le’Riche Entertainment (2010)
www.cdbaby.com/cd/LeanneFaineFavor1

The album notes to Serve the Lord proclaim that Leanne Faine “is bringing church back to church music.”

That she does.

On her third solo release, Faine – famed soloist for the Thompson Community Singers and the voice of the choir’s popular “The Holy Ghost,” – teams with her ensemble Favor to shake the rafters and shout down the glory.

What’s most striking is that the album is unabashedly traditional and singularly-focused. Bucking the trend of offering several varieties of gospel music on one CD, like a Whitman sampler of styles, Serve the Lord starts traditional and stays traditional.

The CD even offers more than the usual portion of up-tempo church wreckers. These include the incendiary title track and current single, the backbeat driven “Awesome God,” and the tambourine-shaking “He’ll Make it Alright.” The latter is a Thompson Community Singers classic from the mid-80s, written by Percy Bady and sung by the late Ethel Holloway. Naturally, Faine dedicates her version to Holloway and the Tommies.

On “Lord, Give Me What I Need,” Faine slows the tempo to sing churchy and flatfooted, with fire in her bones. When album producer Nathan Young sidles up to the B3 to accompany Faine on “O Sweet Wonder,” the Leslie speaker chortles, gargles, and disgorges its thick, gooey chords until the “Yes Lord” chant arises…eerily, too, as if the organ itself was caught up in the spirit.

The closest Serve the Lord comes to contemporary gospel is the bonus track, “Can I Get a Witness,” an ensemble outing with a funky beat recorded live at Faine’s home church, Sweet Holy Spirit, where Bishop Larry D. Trotter is Pastor.

Legendary powerhouse gospel singers Albertina Walker and Ethel Holloway may be gone but their technique and passion live on in the ministries of Chicago artists such as Leanne Faine.

Five of Five Stars

Picks: “Serve the Lord,” “He’ll Make It Alright,” “O Sweet Wonder.”