Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We are urged to follow our hearts to the point where the outcome is often detrimental to our souls, the wishes of the moment burnt at the altar of the long-term expectation that turns to despair as we find ourselves often stony faced or weeping at The Consequence Of Love and all it entails, all it commits.
The value of love though comes when it can find a way to change the way you think, to listen to not heart’s stirrings of youthful adoration or old man’s folly, but to the mind, to hear the glory of another’s point of view; this is the true consequence and magnitude of passion and devotion, it is hearing the soul of another properly, with fire enough that you want to fight alongside them in an army of thousands if possible, or just a handful if truth is on your side.
Rianne Downey’s rise could be called meteoric, from Glasgow, a woman born at the start of a new millennium, the significance of her appearance in the world of gigs, albums, and studio work is absolutely impressive, but meteoric, that is just a word for those who never either see the dedication and hard work that applied from such a young age, or who to refuse to believe in such genius having the patience to be true to their own belief or cause
Vocal beauty is an astonishing thing, it does not have to have to be reminiscent of that which makes angels suffer sweetly in jealousy, but it must be gutsy, filled with courage, daring in its persuasion, and willing to affect the conscious of those to whom a beating heart spells out a kind of worship for all living things with a story to tell.
Rianne Downey has a story, she has her own chronicles of influence, anecdotes of importance and the after-effects of decisions encountered and made in her own name, and in her stunning album The Consequence Of Love those stories are portrayed with genuine affection and with a voice, and music, that is utterly beguiling and with an element of dramatic roughness that amplifies the assuredness of choice that Paul Heaton must have made when he asked her to be his female counterfoil on his intensely cool album from 2024, The Mighty Several.
Such recommendations are probably why Rianne Downey’s introduction has been swift, but it is to the humble nature of the soul that she has been so spectacular a find and as tracks such as The Song Of Old Glencoe, Angel, Because, Nothing Better, and Blue Eyes Burning compel the listener to delve deeper into the Downey atmosphere and harmony driven emotion, so the album takes on the life and feeling of one has propelled other women to be recognised for the sheer weight of dramatic brilliance they possess as writers, as conveyors of the heart’s most sacred thoughts.
Quality and confidence are all to be found on Rianne Downey’s sensationally driven authentic debut; and in this case The Consequence Of Love is sound and beautyin unison.
Ian D. Hall