Revival

From *All Rise*, Porter's most maximalist record — full string sections, a gospel choir, a horn arrangement thick enough to lean on — "Revival" is the album's engine of joy. It moves on a strutting, up-tempo gospel-soul groove with handclaps, a bright brass punch, and background voices answering him like a choir loft that has been waiting all service for this. Porter's baritone rides high and loose here, more shout than croon, with the smiling rasp he saves for uptempo material; he plays with the beat the way a preacher plays with a congregation's expectation, holding a word back until the room leans forward. The lyric calls for renewal — personal, communal, spiritual — a demand that something dormant get up and move again, and it arrived in 2020 with an unintended timeliness that made the title feel like a prayer for the world rather than the soul. Culturally it's Porter finally making the record his voice always implied: not jazz visiting the church but a singer who never left it, with strings borrowed from Nat King Cole's orchestral era. This is the track for a kitchen on a Saturday morning with the volume up, or for the drive home when you need reminding that the tank refills.