On his 1996 debut, Duncan Sheik played the pining lover in a soulless world. It was a pose that made for good melodrama at the expense of great art, bogging down the album with syrupy arrangements and narratives that bordered on maudlin.

Two years do make a difference. Humming finds its predecessor's woebegone crooner replaced by a philosophical singer-songwriter who now tempers his yearning sentiments with droll fatalism. "I feel a little undefined," Sheik confesses on "In Between," the album's opening track, "... like I'm returning/Most everything I bought."

The first album's hefty instrumentation has been pared down to a more conventional rock lineup, with piano and a string section tossed in for a flourish here and there. The first single, "Bite Your Tongue," is a driving hard-pop number whose lyrics, with their curt demand to cut the moping and get on with life, might well be addressing Sheik's earlier persona: "You're not the only one who's been let down/ ... Maybe it's good for you to hit the ground."

Sheik's best moments come on the meticulously structured slow numbers, especially "Everyone, Everywhere," which juxtaposes spare, ruminative verses with sweeping strings. The Duncan Sheik of Humming has lost interest in being a Byronic hero; and in sacrificing his hammy romanticism, he has become a more compelling songwriter. Because a disciplined craftsman is sexier than ten weepy artistes. (RS 800)

NEVA CHONIN