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"There's a whole wide world of mystery and intrigue out there. I felt like, if I wrote another love song, I was going to go crazy." |
So says Duncan Sheik, spokesman for the heart,
articulator for the loved and the lost, guest star on Beverly
Hills, 90210. It's not that he's given up on the art of the
love song on his new album, Humming, it's just that he's
taken it down to another level, one that lies beneath the surface
rather than on the sleeve. "It's very hard to write a love song
without being cliche," Sheik confesses. "And I felt that [with
Duncan Sheik] I had a lot of important things to say, a
lot of weighty ideas, but I didn't want to get on my soapbox with
my first album."
While many sophomore albums themselves fall victim to cliche,
compromising raw originality for over-production or precious
orchestration, Humming moves in the opposite direction.
Though Sheik hasn't completely shirked the predilection for lush
instrumentation that characterized his debut, he's comfortable this
time around balancing the London Session Orchestra with alternative
guitar tuning and social commentary. In other words, he's no longer
simply the poster-boy for the sensitive Nineties guy.
"I always tried not to be dogmatic," explains Sheik of his maturing songcraft. "But then I looked at Bob Dylan, and I thought, he was putting out very important messages." Not that Sheik's vying for Dylan's throne, but he took Dylan's early work as a nod, allowing him to say what he'd always felt. "'Varying Degrees of Con-Artistry' is a song about the tragedy that continually occurs in the world, and it is a bit angry," says the ten-year veteran of Buddhism. "But I think my attitude is more sadness than anger."
Raised on Hilton Head Island, S.C., and the recipient of a
much-touted Semiotics degree from Brown University, Sheik cut his
musical teeth playing lead guitar in a college band with fellow
student Lisa Loeb. Branching off a year later, he
fine-tuned his delicate vocals, intricate guitar and piano work,
and headed West after graduation. Soon after, he was signing on the
dotted line and heading off to France to make his solid and
articulate debut. These days, Sheik explores his world-weary
sadness in his Tribeca loft in New York City, where the foundation
of Humming was written. "I was living in Los Angeles, and
I went to France to record the last album," says Sheik of his
nomadic nature. "And when I came back, I flew through New York. I
just never took the next flight. I stopped here."
To build upon the skeletal structure of Humming, Sheik
picked up again and headed to El Cortijo, Spain. There, Duncan
holed up with producer Rupert Hine and arranger
Simon Hale for two months, and spent time with
records by Steve Reich, Mark Hollis and
Belle & Sebastian. Overlooking the
Mediterranean, he busied himself creating eleven lush, gorgeous
meditations on sadness, inspiration, bitterness and the death of
Jeff Buckley.
"Grace was the record of the Nineties. Jeff definitely had
the voice of the Nineties," says Sheik of the hero he never got the
chance to meet. "That song ["A Body Goes Down"] is sort of a
funeral procession song." Asked what he makes of such a young
person losing his life, Sheik waxes Buddhist. "I believe that
everything in life happens in a strict cause-and-effect method, and
while both happen concurrently, the weight doesn't hit
simultaneously."
Given that he accepts life's unfortunate happenstance as fate and
karma, it's not surprising that Sheik is comfortable with his place
at the forefront of the sensitive singer-songwriter "trend." "If
they want to make a trend out of it, that's fine," Sheik admits.
"But I'm not going to change who I am just to make myself more
appealing."
HEIDI SHERMAN(October 6, 1998)