Product Reviews
Will Downing has been on a creative tear in the 21st century. Though he's released 14 albums in his 22-year career, he's issued eight of them since 2000. On his debut offering for Concord, Downing finalizes a project he's been working on for five years: a concept album. Lust, Love & Lies (An Audio Novel) is the most straightforward adult R&B recording of his career. With co-production by Downing, Chris "Big Dog" Davis, and longtime collaborator Rex Rideout, the jazzy side is left behind on this date, and all of Downing's energies are concentrated on an upscale, smooth-as-silk, 20-track investigation of various states of attraction, indulgence, love, betrayal, and romantic confusion with a host of players and vocalists. Among these tunes some brief, scattered spoken word interludes meant to serve as conversations actually add weight and heft to the plot, which is more complex than it might otherwise seem. While this is the most seamlessly focused record Downing's issued and taken as a whole is deeply satisfying, there are some standout cuts: the lithe, shimmeringly light funk on "Glad I Met You Tonight," the steamy babymaker "Consensual," the full-blown romantic soul of "Fly Higher," the heartbreaker "At This Moment," and the light club stepper "Coulda Been/Shoulda Been." The story is for the listener to decipher, but it does have an unexpected ending in the spoken word reprise of "Glad I Met You Tonight," entitled "D j Vu." From conception to production to sequencing to songwriting to performance, Lust, Love & Lies (An Audio Novel) is another watermark for Downing. That said, it will be interesting to see how longtime fans who have relied on his fence-walking talent between smooth soul and contemporary jazz will react to a strictly R&B album -- the guess is very favorably. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi
Product Notes
2010 release from the veteran R&B vocalist. Every story has an arc, and love stories are no different. There's the initial encounter, the flirtation, the first date, the escalation, the passion...and then the map gets a little fuzzy. What comes next is hard to predict - rock-solid commitment and eternal devotion for some, disillusionment or even betrayal for others. Some stories end happily ever after, some not so much. Downing has a tale of love to tell. It may or may not be based on a true story, but it's one that we've all lived through at one time or another. Downing's version, Lust, Love and Lies (An Audio Novel) - which he fondly calls "an audio soap opera," complete with intermittent vignettes of intimate conversations that help move the story along - includes elements of comedy, tragedy and all the subtle shades in between.