Shaun Kirk

Giving

shaunkirk.com/Bandcamp

Melbourne “blues” singer and guitarist Shaun Kirk has an ugly Playstation tone to his guitar across five-track EP, Giving. More worrying, he’s in New Zealand next week for a bunch of shows. Give him a chance perhaps, but his use of the word blues as a descriptor is tantamount to musical blackface.

It’s nice that he’s, erm, giving 10% of the profits from his latest EP to Orphfund but I’m not sure this is, in the end, going to raise much in the way of money, more a case of raising awareness: specifically awareness that Shaun Kirk isn’t anything close to a) the blues or b) good.

It’s water-colour treatments and hackneyed phrasing, its trite lyrics and songs that are almost profoundly uninteresting. So the intention is there – and perhaps he’s a charming performer, some charisma or something, but I shouldn’t think checking out his latest EP will put anyone in the mood to see his show/s. And the closing 10-minute Find Me A Lady is excruciating; he sounds like he’s hijacked what was, at some stage, a decent enough BBQ and his relentless party-guitar strumming is forcing a major buzzkill on the tens of people gathered, albeit reluctantly.