Still Love You – Lee Knox (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

With Still Love You, Lee Knox has fashioned an album that comfortably explores the space where classic R&B, commercial soul, and contemporary pop grooves meet. Not only liberally mixing those sounds but testing their boundaries along the way. Built on the belief that music should reflect the pulse of today while retaining a respectful nod to yesterday, Knox walks a sure-footed line between tradition and innovation.

His secret, in my opinion, is that he understands that making great music is an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one, that the past influences the present and therefore shapes the future. As a result, these songs feel both familiar and fresh, drawing on the rich legacy of soul, funk, and R&B music while embracing modern production values and contagious pop sensibilities.

The opening salvo, “Reverse It,” sets the tone for what follows with its smooth soul-pop groove, immediately showcasing Knox’s skill at wielding melody and rhythm, though it is just a gentle introduction. Following immediately, we find “More Than Look” running on a cool and contagious reggae beat, proving that the album’s sense of adventure is one of its greatest assets

And these two opening salvos are a great indication of how widely he wanders the more commercial paths of the musical map. “Who Is That Green Car” sits at the cutting edge of delicious dancefloor sounds, the title track is the most gorgeous and gorgeously romantic of neo-soul ballads, and “Run It Back” is the sort of R&B groover that the likes of Michael Jackson himself would have loved to have had in his back catalog.

Still Love You is certainly an album that sits on the shoulders of groove and soul giants. But, it is also the sound of an artist moving with the times, making music not so much in the style of past fashion as in the style of what those past greats might sound like if they were writing chart-bound music for a modern audience. As always, it is important to know where your music comes from, but, as Lee Knox proves here, it is more important to know where you are going.