For some artists, the addition of broad instrumentation and virtuosity in the studio can do a lot to make up for talent gaps, or a lack of skill in the first place, but there are others who don’t need the help – frankly, it would just get in their way. While I have not been listening to his work for very long at all, I do get the impression from his single “I Feel Your Love” that gospel songwriter Albert Artis is one of these special artists, and he isn’t doing much to discredit such a theory with the release of this latest song and its music video.
First off, this arrangement is one of the more spellbinding I’ve come across lately, and it works to put as much of the spotlight on our singer as possible. Whether intentional or not, this is a single that feels like it was produced around my man’s voice almost exclusively, but this isn’t to say that the background is lacking in substance at all. Truth be told, it exists to serve the verses he’s singing to us, and for how good a singer he happens to be, the instrumental aspect of Artis’ new track has to be as sterling as his pipes are.
Forget waiting for an epic climax to build on its own; Albert Artis is chasing after the chorus in this song like it’s his only salvation, and to the extent that it verifies his authenticity as a lyricist, this has a lot of truth to it. He’s making a point, a declaration if you will, not to the audience alone but to God himself, which accounts for the gusto with which he’s offering us this narrative. Nothing is bigger in this song than his soul, and you don’t have to be a professional critic to recognize that.
Unfortunately for those of us who love quality gospel music, there really aren’t a lot of players quite like Albert Artis active in the scene anymore, but this perhaps makes a performance like the one he’s giving in this single all the more exciting and endearing for us as onlookers. In Artis’ sound, we’ve got someone true to the model and never looking to deviate from a tried and true aesthetical path, and if it’s resulting in work like that which I’m hearing in “I Feel Your Love,” I would implore him to keep up the effort and not change a thing.
