Stee Downes

As the summer patio season kicks into high gear, so too does that number of breezy soul releases hitting record shelves, making this quite the ideal time for globetrotting soul enthusiast Stee Downes to land his debut disc, All In A Day, on North American Shores. The multi-instrumental Dublin native does a decent job crafting an ideal soundtrack for a few afternoon warm-up drinks, matching a moderate keyboard groove with relaxed guitar licks and loose, often Latin-influenced rhythms that go from polite shuffle to rump shaker and back again by album's end. In his more ambitious moments, Downes pads out bouncier cuts like "When I'm Feeling" with some Brazilian-tailored flair to add to the already animated incursion into disco and broken beat territory on "Disciples" and "Movement," respectively. Unfortunately, Downes isn't much of a singer, and while his Damon Aaron-styled delivery works well in small doses a very limited melodic repertoire, both vocally and musically, makes for a fair bit of tiresome repetition throughout the record.