Promises – VaShawn Mitchell & Friends (tbgb review)

Promises
VaShawn Mitchell & Friends
Tyscot 2007
www.tyscot.com

Chicago’s VaShawn “Triple Threat” Mitchell is a talented young man with an expressive voice and the ability to maneuver deftly through the various sub-genres of gospel music, which he demonstrates on his latest recording, Promises.

Much of Promises contains full-bodied Praise & Worship music, which befits VaShawn’s responsibility as minister of music for Bishop Larry D. Trotter’s Sweet Holy Spirit Church on Chicago’s southeast side. Songs such as the intense title track and the melodic “I Worship You” fit squarely within that category and will please P&W enthusiasts.

But the urban inspirational and the “old school church” sides of VaShawn best demonstrate his gifts of musical expression. “My Testimony,” for example, has a deliciously ‘90’s O’Landa Draper swagger as the group impishly plucks the syllables of each line (“My-test be-comes my test-i-mo-ny”). “Favor (Ain’t Fair)” is a bracing urban inspirational song with an honest commentary on God’s distribution of talents. “For My Good” is the best track, with a serpentine synth ostinato grabbing listeners right from the beginning and keeping them moving with a polyrhythmic foundation beneath the melody.

Compulsory for any VaShawn Mitchell recording is an interstitial of the famed “Chicago Bump,” that fiery, intense, holy-dancing moment right out of the Pentecostal church that signals the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is gospel’s most exciting contribution to American music.

For as good as VaShawn’s vocals are, the hard-singing female vocalists steal the show on Promises, stepping up to the mic at various points in the project and rifling off lines of music with a preacher’s conviction. I wish I could say who was who, but the liner notes only identify one, Markeyta Sconiers, in association with a specific track. The rest of the singers are under the broad heading of “Friends.”

VaShawn Mitchell’s Believe in Your Dreams (Tyscot, 2005) is a superior project to Promises, but because of the variety of styles on Promises, listeners will find something they will enjoy.

Three of Four Stars