Chantay Savage

August 29 - September 5, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

** Chantay Savage

I WILL SURVIVE (DOIN' IT MY WAY)

(RCA)
Why bring no less than seven different producers (best known ones: Steve "Silk" Hurley and Kay Fingers) into Chantay Savage's singing debut if all you have in mind is to ape Toni Braxton and Lisa Fischer? Not that Savage seems to mind. She sings all but one of the CD's 13 tracks steadily, unhurried, as comfortable phrasing the standard-issue scats of "Body" as the overused swooping and pleading of "All Night All Day" and "Let's Do It Right." She goes on with her understated, efficient vocal style even though its matter-of-factness is trumped by the plainness of the music. It's courageous of a singer, in this time of far too many bejeweled divas, to avoid all mannerism, for mannerism breeds irony, and irony, when forced, gives off snobbishness. But Savage's economy of means requires music with far more dash or subtlety than usual (she has a bit more stability than the nervous-sounding Fischer when vocalizing the upper register and a more efficient soprano than the overly sumptuous Braxton). Here, except for a muscular dance version of Gloria Gaynor's chestnut "I Will Survive," she gets less than an even break.
-- Michael Freedberg