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Through A Glass Darkly (CD Digipak Album)

Shamus Dark

Label: Bunker Media
Released: 2019
Duration: 52:00:00
Views: 1,634

Tracks

New Dawn Fades; Laura; The Moon Was Yellow; Almost Blue; Just Friends; All Or Nothing At All; The Night We Called It A Day; Baby Blue No 2; Only The Lonely; Everything Happens To Me; The Gal That Got Away; Night And Day; Smoke.

Personnel

Shamus Dark

vocals

Additional Personnel / Information

Shamus Dark: vocals; Pete Millward: producer & arranger; Ruth Elder: violin; Michael Kurtz: trumpet; Eugene Pao: guitar; Adrian Sledmere: guitar; Jens Bunge: harmonica; Rob Hughes: flute.

Album Description

It's taken a long while, but at last, here's the follow up album to the critically acclaimed Songs For Suicidal Lovers. With Pete Millward once again arranging and producing, the songs are mostly from the Great American Songbook, but with a few surprises thrown in. Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades' gets the same brooding treatment accorded to 'Atmosphere' on Suicidal Lovers. Even more down-tempo and sad is Elvis Costello's 'Almost Blue'. And the final song on the album is by Millward himself - the savage and fractured 'Smoke', with pulsating strings and backwards guitar. In addition to the brilliant arrangements, each track features solo playing by some of the most talented musicians from the world of jazz and classical music. Jens Bunge from Germany adds scintillating harmonica to two songs; Ruth Elder's violin weaves magic around 'Laura', the title song to Otto Preminger's film noir of the same name; Rob Hughes, after completing a world tour with ABC, layed down some haunting flute to the classic Arlen/Gershwin song, ‘The Gal That Got Away’, originally written for Judy Garland for the film ‘A Star Is Born’; Adrian Sledmere, who also played on Shamus’s last album, Trouble In Paradise, adds shimmering ambient/blues guitar to three songs; Two of the soloists from Suicidal Lovers also appear; Asian guitar legend Eugene Pao plays guitar on three songs, including Joy Division’s ‘New Dawn Fades’; And last but certainly not least, New York trumpeter Michael Kurtz adds to the evocation of sadness and loss on four songs, with stunning solos on ‘The Night We Called It A Day’ and Cahn and Van Heusen’s ‘Only The Lonely’, originally written for Frank Sinatra and the title song to what is often considered his greatest album.