From the Banks of the Mighty Mediocre: Duncan Sheik's White Limousine
Written: Jan 24 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Mostly vintage Duncan Sheik... and dude, it's been ages!
Cons: A couple of whiny-preachy numbers (that are ultimately forgivable).
The Bottom Line: In which the author wishes he could see Duncan Sheik's mom's face.
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| plorentz's Full Review: White Limousine [Digipak] - Duncan Sheik |
Now that we no longer expect him to be a pop star, it's easier to appreciate (if not obsess over) who singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik actually is. That is, a perfectly fine songwriter, with a lovely, understated voice, and a penchant for orchestral production. His records are never spectacular, but for fans of perfectly fine songwriting, lovely, understated singing and orchestral production, a new Duncan Sheik album is always cause for private celebration (if not public jubilation). On the other hand, the best that could possibly said of any new Duncan Sheik album is that it satisfies his meager (and getting meagerer) audience's simple expectations. The music of Duncan Sheik defies superlatives, occupying a moderately cozy spot on the banks of the not-so-wild River Mediocre, smack dab in the middle of Okayland, where it is perpetually overcast.
The main problem with Duncan Sheik's newest album, White Limousine, isn't the fact that it's pretty much like every other album he's released. It's that he clearly aspires to something more relevant. And as songs like the Bush-wacking title track suggest, relevance just isn't Sheik's thing. Musically, it's everything we could possibly want - minor key and dirgy with a muddy beat and some power-chord guitar to spike up the string-laden arrangement. But his metaphor for Dubya's America rings, if not false, then cliched and, worst of all, dull. Can there be anything more redundant that one more line of print about Bush's flight-suit fiasco?
All too often (though, admittedly, not all that often), this album finds Sheik drifting away from the haunted, cryptic poetry of songs like "She Runs Away" and his album Phantom Moon, towards stilted topicality and righteous political anger - places the soft-spoken Sheik is woefully ill-prepared to go either as a songwriter or a vocalist. The one track that truly grabs the listeners' attention in a way that approaches rawk - "Shopping" - is also a whiny, sarcastic, overwrought diatribe about materialism and the way that big, nasty monster of a record industry (not to mention that big, nasty monster of a world) works:
I hope that you don't find it shocking
Rock n' roll is built on shopping
But then, maybe I'm being a little harsh. After all, for the most part, this record really is vintage Sheik. Songs like the album opener "Hey Casanova" and "Nothing Fades" are dense, dark, sprawling beauties with tiny electronic flourishes underlining lyrics emotionally abstract enough to cement Sheik's position as the Y chromosome's answer to Sarah McLachlan. And he does some of his best, most achingly delicate singing on songs like the falsetto-laden "The Dawn's Request" and "Hymn", where the spiritual yearning in his voice reminds me of folksinger Richard Shindell.
But my favorite (right now) is "Fantastic Toys and Corduroys", a love note to his mother full of boyish awkwardness - succinct, unclever stanzas like:
When I see you
Whey you laugh
I'm never sad
I don't want to be sad
I don't want you to be sad
We shouldn't be sad
Lines that he stretches out on long soaring notes over a gently looping piano line that sounds borrowed from a music box.
In fact, it's the general, fussy beauty of the bulk of the White Limousine that makes the (very few) rotten parts really stink. It's also what makes them largely forgivable. This album isn't likely to win Sheik any new fans, but it certainly won't disappoint those who've been waiting nearly four years for new material. Recommended, with reservations.
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Note: This album comes in a cardboard double digi-pak, and features a separate DVD-ROM (no DualDisc... hooray!) which allows listeners to mix up their own versions of Duncan Sheik's songs. Unfortunately, I'm not able to try this feature out (no DVD-ROM drive, folks), but I thought ya should know.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"White Limousine" by Duncan Sheik
Zoe Records
Released 1/24/06
Produced by Duncan Sheik
55 min.
SONGS: Hey Casanova - The Dawn's Request - White Limousine - I Don't Believe in Ghosts - Nothing Fades - Fantastic Toys and Corduroys - Shopping - Star-Field On Red Lines - I Wouldn't Mind - Land - So Gone - Hymn
Recommended:
Yes
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plorentz
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Member: Paul Lorentz
Location: The Land of Limburger and Leinenkugel's
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