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July 31, 2025
Vin Downes: City Lights Hide the Stars
https://www.minor7th.com/m7_5_25.html
Vin Downes, "City Lights Hide the Stars," 2024
In a previous life I am convinced that Vin Downes was a pastry chef, creating exquisite desserts, artisanal delights and delicate diminutive morsels that satisfied the sweetest of culinary desires. To our great fortune, Maestro Downes is a guitarist and composer. City Lights Hide the Stars is his ninth solo studio album, and his first since 2022. Downes released four solo albums between 2020 and 2022, then resurfaced in 2024, collaborating with Tom Eaton and Jeff Oster to release Seven Conversations, contributing electric guitar to a collection ambient in-studio improvisations. Since 2011 Downes and Eaton have developed a strong music relationship producing ten albums in that time including Four Guitars (2019) featuring Will Ackerman, Todd Mosby, Trevor Gordon Hall and Vin Downes in various combinations. Not surprisingly, City Lights Hide the Stars again leans on his relationship with Tom Eaton to produce Downes most intimate and impeccable sonic offering to date. Downes is classically trained, and by virtue of his vocation as an instructor of classical guitar at Bayonne High School in New Jersey, he admittedly has a classical guitar in his hands for hours every day. This album is, in many ways, his attempt to embrace this instrument in a manner in which heretofore had not occurred to him. With these songs he tried to compose in such a way that "the head meets the heart." To bring his classical training face to face with his "gut instincts" in terms of melody, structure and the omnipotent demands of tone. To accomplish this feat Downes modified his thoughts about compositional structure, particularly in terms of length. The 16 compositions that comprise the album total 34 minutes. Six of which are under two minutes in length, and the rest no longer than 2:38. On the "head" side of composition Downes embraces standard tuning as well as the Campanella Effect, by incorporating open strings, allowing them to ring out and sustain. A technique much more common with steel string fingerstyle guitar. The result is nothing short of stellar and, perhaps, therein lies an intended symbolism in the album's title. Sonically, it was Downes's intent to make sure the City Lights (head) did not hide the Stars (heart) on this album. "Solitude And The Night" opens the album with the feel of a light jazz standard that beguiles and beckons while introducing the listener to the exceptional and impeccable tone of a master musician. Once track two,"All Out of Words," begins there is no going back as its delicate bass line, gentle moments of vibrato and tender cascading melody are simply mesmerizing. I am particularly drawn to "The Promise Of Change", "The Coral Staircase" and "Streetlight Glow," however, I can say without reservation that each tune here is astonishingly brilliant and deserving of praise. There is an impeccability throughout every aspect of this recording that is so very rare and invigorating. Structure, performance and production amalgamate perfectly. It is one of a very few recordings that can wrest my entire attention upon hearing the first note and keep me spellbound until the very last note decays. In fact, the last tune on the album, "The Call," is a bitter sweet melody drenched in longing, hope and desire that will inspire you to start this exquisite sonic journey allover again . . . For those of us who attempt to master the fretboard, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Downes offers intricate and precise tab for every one of his compositions on his website, not surprising for a lifelong educator. © James Filkins
