September 2006

bcmagazine webissue - posted September 2006

The Dark Side

It’s mysterious, it’s brooding, and its marketing is full of shit – but Shamus Dark’s Songs for Suicidal Lovers is damn good. The release of the jazz covers album with a difference was accompanied by a flurry of publicity attempting to build an aura of mystique around the shadowy singer known as Shamus Dark. The marketing pegged Shamus as the “previously unheard of and reclusive vocalist” – well, we’re not sure of that, and we can’t tell you exactly who he is. But then, neither can his website, shamusdark.com, which features fictional articles from fictional characters testifying to Shamus’s (perhaps fictional) accomplishments. But what of the album? It covers songs made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker, Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole, and you’d think there’d be plenty of room for error, but with the able support of Hong Kong’s jazz guitar maestro Eugene Pao, Shamus succeeds in twisting new life into greats such as Angel Eyes, You Don’t Know What Love Is, and I Get Along Without You Very Well. Recorded in Hong Kong, London, Marseille, Los Angeles and Kathmandu. Well, so they say. Highly recommended.