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Duncan Sheik isn't just the
over-educated, sensitive guy we took
him for
"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