Duncan Sheik “Legerdemain”
In every friend circle, there’s a lovable schmuck for whom the party never stopped. Always gregarious, always a joy to be around -- a cross between Norm from “Cheers” and Dave Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused.” He’s single many years after everybody else married off. He’s professionally adrift. There was a minor bankruptcy declaration along the way. But, somehow, he still strikes the pose of a wheeler and dealer.
Inevitably, everything catches up with him. Maybe he ends up sleeping on your couch for a month. Maybe you end up lending him money, knowing he'll never pay you back. Eventually, you start feeling like you’re being swindled a bit -- either that you’re a mark for a mediocre con man or you are an enabler of that guy. You’re less amused, more concerned, until you find yourself thinking, “Will he ever stop fucking up?”
My twenties were filled with these guys and nearly every one of them toed that line between romantic and sad. Honestly, I related to them. I wasn’t immune to it. Intoxication can provide purpose and character to anxiety, sadness and heartache. It can elevate heroic moping. It can feel meaningful. And this enthrallment with wallowing went hand in hand with not wanting the party to end. After the music stopped, the moping wasn’t charming or funny. There is actually a soundtrack for this -- for those miserable, end of the party, please don’t make me go home alone moments. It’s the sad sack hit from one of the 1990s most sensitive, glum, overserved “That Guys.”
I am barely breathing
And I can’t find the air
Don’t know who I’m kidding
Imagining you care
Duncan Sheik's brief moment in the sun as a pop troubadour occured at the very beginning of his career arc. “Barely Breathing” from his eponymous debut arrived amid a musical landscape made by the likes of Britpop and Grunge. String laden, wistful, strummy and slight - it was the sliver of Alt Rock that was easily digestible and imitated. It had just enough angst for post-grads, and was acceptable for their Adult Alternative aunts and uncles. In contrast to the angst of Nirvana, R.E.M. and Oasis, “Barely Breathing,” was a song perfectly suited to its flaccid, Gen X moment. It spent more than a year on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Grammy.
In fact, Sheik slotted in so perfectly to his milieu that he was soon eclipsed by more generic, but less mopey peers. He was quickly forgotten even while his song was still being played on radio stations across the country. Duncan Sheik’s version of Alt Rock is the version that actually made it to the middle of America. It's the reason there’s still oversized appreciation for a group like Third Eye Blind, a band whose sell-by date was sometime before 1999. For many of the flyover states, the Alt Rock revolution didn’t really arrive until the second wave carried the torch to the top 40. Like Aerosmith in the 70’s, filling the voids where a Stone’s tour didn’t make a stop, Bubble-Grunge and Adult-Alternative sounded like a boom in middle America. Surely there is something sad about a movement being reduced to an easily replicable beige, but it also speaks to how big the crater was after impact. Beginning around 1996, music was less about the impact and more about filling the void.
For his part, Duncan Sheik’s debut was filled with delicate, partly cloudy songs backed by orchestral strings -- something like a reimagining of “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme” with the score to “The English Patient.” Meanwhile, the singer sounds overtly literate. You can hear the recency of his college degree. And plus, it’s just too wordy to work as background music. The songs hew close to pop arrangement, but they also meander, in attempts to either suggest his heroes (Nick Drake) or to impress the ladies. He sings about misery with the same gusto as he croons about a lover (which, to be clear, is not all that much gusto). And everything is coated in the same color of longing. On the closer, “Little Hands”, that longing tips over into bleakness in the way that a 6th beer can turn a party into pity.
Unlike his peers, Sheik's misfires come off less like malformed hit songs and more like an inability to find redemption in his field of vision. Young Sheik had the heart of a poet but not yet the pen. Where Rob Thomas or Johnny Reznik -- the consummate Light Alt Pop craftsmen of their era -- could rely on schmaltz and hooks to carry them, Sheik really wanted to conjure something out of the darkness. He didn’t see any way out of his cage. It was more a question of how well he could describe the bars. This was perhaps a tougher road to hoe, but honestly, this is where his gift as a writer was forged - in his willingness to dive in and swim around in the muck.
In the wake of his one big hit -- and like any good artist from the Clinton years -- Sheik went about dismantling his success. The cocktail was two parts suspicion of success, one part craving it, and one part surrendering to it. One day you’re a genius, invited to “famous person dinners” and then six months later nobody will return your call and you’re obviously an asshole. But, for that period of 18 months when everybody knows and loves you, it's a ride. On his sophomore effort, “Humming” (1998), Sheik isn't quite teetering, but he doubles down on the self loathing from his debut in a manner that is at odds with the romantic sweep of the new material.
Sheik went completely shades of black for his third effort, “Phantom Moon” (2001). It's a lot of tension and little release -- a bit like an adult contemporary version of the Cure’s “Pornography.” It really wasn’t until his fourth record, an overt turn back toward pop songcraft, that Sheik found his balance of light and shade. “Daylight” (2002) is an honest to goodness excellent record. The production occasionally feels a few sizes too big, but he also sounds like he’s smiling when some of the roaring moments arrive. When Sheik wryly intones that he’s “a genius” on the opener, he sounds like he needs a fistful of Advil and a therapist on some awful morning after. But he also sounds very self-aware. “On a High,” Sheik's last charting single, he is suspicious of his chemically-induced good feelings. He wants to know if his miserablism is an antidote to this shallow, feel-good ethos or a millstone around his neck. In fact, almost everything on “Daylight” leaves a mark. It was never a “cool” album. It was not “popular.” But it’s exceptionally well made and shows remarkable songwriting progress.
On “White Limousine” (2006) however, Sheik sounds like he’s disappearing into pitch black ether. More pleading for relief than longing for euphoria, he starts singing about actual ghosts. He sounds more helpless, and more tired. It’s a tough hang. On his subsequent record, “Whisper House” (2009) rather than backing off or recalibrating, he doubled down. His flare for the morbid began to border on the grotesque. He opens the album with a song called “Better off Dead”. What was once grim (but romantic) had become full fledged gothic.
It was just then, when he sounded most spent as a recording artist, that Sheik reinvented himself as a musical theater impresario. The Rock Musical hybrid was not new. The Who and Floyd had adopted the form without becoming subsumed by Broadway. And, sure, Bowie or Freddie and Elton could flirt with theater and camp, but so long as they were Rock stars, the line had to be towed. On the other hand, camp was at odds with the purported sincerity and artistry of Alternative Rock. So, when we learned, in 2006, that Duncan Sheik was writing the music for a musical based on a nineteenth century German book, more than a few eyebrows were raised. On the other hand, Broadway had come a long way since “Phantom” and “Les Mis.” In the 90s, in particular, the form had been stripped down and deconstructed several times over. Sheik noted in the New York Times:
“As for indie musicians themselves, they’ve often prided themselves on their aversion to theatrical excess. But a few of the breed experimented with Broadway elements this year, embracing showmanship, storytelling and classical instrumentation.”
Amazingly, the narrative of “Spring Awakening” blends almost seamlessly with familiar Adult-Contempo Sheikisms. As a coming of age story set in Germany town in the1890's, the musical is full of things not found in previous Duncan Sheik albums. Namely, sexual innuendo and humor. Hearing trained vocalists inhabit melodies so clearly written by Sheik is a somewhat alien experience at first. After all, his tone is orchestral, but bittersweet to gloomy. But when the music matches the adolescent themes, edging closer to Pop-Punk, as on "The Bitch of Living," the whole thing works in a way it probably shouldn't. Alt rock goes Broadway, and drags all of its sarcasm, moping, and up/down dynamics along for the ride. “Spring Awakening” was a completely unexpected success, surpassed perhaps, only by what would come next for Ducan Sheik. Just as Broadway was toasting his success, he recorded an aggressively middling 80s covers album (2011) and, just before he embarked on his tour, he checked himself into rehab.
"After the success of Spring Awakening I found myself in 2011 with an American Psycho (theatre production) that was years away from being produced. I wasn't selling records in any huge numbers. I bought a house up in Garrison (NY) and I spent all this money building the recording studio. I essentially didn't have any money. All of a sudden everything that had been so great for the past three years went away and I didn't see any light at the end of the tunnel. And so, I think one of the ways I was dealing with that was this constant stream of pretty good white wine. It just sent me to a really depressed place. I honestly don't think it was the alcohol. It was the confluence of all the stuff that was going on in my life. I just needed to reset."
It goes without saying that, in 2001, Duncan Sheik had a blog. In 2011, he shared:
"Having left treatment with the blessing of my excellent recovery counselors, I’m currently in Jakarta, Indonesia, writing songs as well as formulating ideas for a book and working on a few musical theater projects, including Alice In Wonderland, The Nightingale and American Psycho. I’m chanting, playing guitar and writing stories. Life is good. Actually, exponentially better than when I was drinking like a ridiculous fish. "
Sheik didn’t make another Pop record for four years. And so when “Legerdemain” (2015) did arrive, he genuinely sounded like a new man. He was no longer trying to be Nick Drake or Ethan Hawke or Elliott Smith. Throughout the sprawling album, you can hear new purpose -- a clarity of thought and sound. Many years removed from his first Pop strums, electronic textures, sharp and pulsing, drive many of the most convincing moments. The pain he describes here, the pain of a man of forty six, is not shrouded in affect or mist or haze. It’s honestly described in high definition. Plus, the whole thing moves in a way his previous records didn’t. For nearly two decades, we’d come to expect that Duncan Sheik was aiming for our minds or our hearts. Now, apparently, he was also aiming towards our middle and behind.
“Hey You," the true stand out of the album, might be the best song the man ever wrote. Previously, Sheik would sing about emptiness, loss, and how ugly his insides felt. But, the twenty-seven year old Sheik who wrote "Barely Breathing" disguised these feelings with winks and nods. In the mid and late thirties, after so many attempts, however, he seemed to have run out of ways to describe that feeling. Here, though, over the sparest piano chords, he abandons all pretense. His waifish figure rounded, his airy tenor deepened, he sounds like a naked, humble, middle aged man. He’s surrendered. He’s lost some battles but gained his masterpiece.
While his later albums were full of sickly, brittle moments, on "Warning Light" he’s an entirely different sort of fragile. Like a drunk, fresh out of rehab, he marvels at everyday sensations:
I've never felt water like this
A soft, a liquid kiss
I'm drowning in the bliss
Everything is brand new, all over again. A House beat thumps underneath burbling keyboard drones and electro bells. The singer is healthy, reanimated in some sober, zen discoteque.
Occasionally “Legerdemain” sounds like Sheik got a little too comfortable writing for all those theater majors. He cannot breathe life into the millennial whoops of "Selling Out." And "Biurmingham" sounds like it belongs in the first act of an off-broadway production. At seventy plus minutes, the whole thing is too long. But that’s probably just a holdover from the compact disc era. Or post-rehab hyperfunctioning. Either way, I won’t quibble. Let Duncan Sheik have his moment, two decades after his moment.
Fatalism and pessimism are themes Sheik had revisited time and again as a younger man. Here, he’s no longer enthralled with the sadness. But, he doesn’t sound like he’s fighting it, either. The relentless self loathing that curdled his lesser records is absent. The gothic end-is-nigh fatalism is also gone. Over many years and many songs, Sheik had sketched out an ideal version of himself: a guy who was neither self interested nor self indulgent; the “genius” he desperately wanted to be but knew he could never become. In middle age, scarred, burly and weathered, Sheik sounds like he’s let go of the fantasy. Or at least the fantasy that he might become that guy by beating himself up. The sadness here is not romantic. It’s human. Lived in. There’s a sense of spiritual calm on “Legerdemain” that isn’t inflated or cheap. It’s more like the abiding, earned acceptance that comes when you’re really OK that the party is over.