Duncan Sheik may have the most inappropriate nom de plume in all of popular music. While his name may give the impression that he's a slick bump-and-grind balladeer among the likes of Keith Sweat or Billy Ocean, his new album, "Phantom Moon," most definitely proves otherwise.
After investing 50 minutes of listening, you wish Sheik spent more time absorbing those kind of slow jams. Simply put, "Phantom Moon" desperately needs to be, as Color Me Badd put it, "sexed up."
To be fair, "Phantom Moon" is more of a misguided album than a bad one. The circumstances that surround it reek of side-project EP material: playwright Steven Sater handles the lyrics, the instrumentation is very much anti-pop and the album is being released on the folk label Nonesuch. Apparently, Sheik is just fine with "Barely Breathing" being his only hit.
The problem is, however, that "Barely Breathing" was one of his best songs, and much of "Phantom Moon" does not play toward his strengths. The album finds Sheik scrapping the lush orchestration and conventional song crafting that typified his previous work, instead putting his voice and Sater's lyrics up front.
While the straight-outta Brown University philosophizing that led to song titles such as "Varying Degrees Of Con-Artistry" on his last album are thankfully gone, we get often inscrutable poetry in return. And whatever happened to the drums?
You can Mad-Lib through most of the meanings; words like "gray," "moon," "darkness" and "heart" pop up a lot. Whether he's singing about silver mermaids in "Sad Stephen's Song" or some dude named "Mr. Chess," Sheik's unwavering delivery gives each song a melancholy, detached feel regardless of the topic.
Sheik attempts to cash in on the renewed interest in his idol Nick Drake's Volkswagen-approved classic "Pink Moon." But his singing is often too low-key for its own good. Sonically, the two are comparable, but you could fit all of "Phantom Moon's" emotional exertion into one Drake song.
"The Winds That Blow" and "Time And Good Fortune" are the straight-up love songs on "Phantom Moon," and, not surprisingly, the best. On an album that avoids anything that remotely resembles a hook, the perfect meshing of a fruity line like "you were the sword by my side" with a sighing string section is what sticks. The mildly exotic "Mouth On Fire" finally gives the somewhat suggestive lyrics some actual force, setting up the album's centerpiece, the flowingly poetic "Sad Stephen's Song."
Despite Sheik's best intentions, two-thirds into the album, I was really wondering what I was going to have for lunch and whether or not I was going to Sunshine to pick up my laundry. In other words, kudos to you if you can manage to make it through the whole thing without getting bored.
The melodies start to blend into each other, despite the occasional lapse into Bible-ese on "Lo And Behold" or the Miller Time slide guitar in "Requiescat." Sheik achieves a consistent mood to a fault; each song coalesces into such a pretty, shadowy whole, that you pray for anything: a drum solo, Duncan all of a sudden renaming himself MC Iron Sheik, anything to break up the monotony.
Sheik's attempt at expanding beyond average white-guy introspection is an obvious attempt to make a statement. I don't have a clue as to what that statement is, though. Somewhere inside "Phantom Moon'"s whole, a few quality songs are dying to get out, but as it stands, it's little more than an experiment in prettiness. Sheik is a one-hit wonder who, if "Phantom Moon" is any indication, is destined to remain one.
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