Consumer Guide Album

Allen Toussaint: Life, Love and Faith [Warner Bros., 1972]
Toussaint relies on overdubbing to camouflage his often colorless delivery and occasionally colorless songwriting. But if going solo stretches him thin, it also stretches him--the phasing-and-saxophone on "Goin' Down" is a producer's dream come true, "Victims of the Darkness" is recommended to Norman Whitfield, and on "Out of the City" he reminds us that in the country "the grass is greener on every side." B+