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Duncan Sheik's Next Album A Departure From Pop
12/22/2000 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen
(12/22/00, 5 p.m. ET) - Duncan Sheik, best known for his pop-rock ditty "Barely Breathing," has completed a whole album based on the literary works of New York playwright Steven Sater. Sater wanted Sheik to put music to his words for a few songs in the play Umbrage, but the songwriting relationship spiraled into a new, mostly acoustic album titled Phantom Moon.
The disc is scheduled for release February 27, and Sheik told LAUNCH he wanted to expand beyond the pop realm: "I guess you can say it's really almost like a folk record -- it's like a folk record with string arrangements. It's a little bit of a departure for me, and it was a way for me to get some musical things off my chest that I wanted to do without having to make a pop record."
Sheik said working on Phantom Moon was a completely new experience. "I come up with music all of the time, but I don't necessarily compose lyrics at the same rate. Working with Steven permitted this peculiar distance from the lyric-writing process. Certainly, I can feel in an intense way about a lyric I write for myself, but sometimes when you're so close to something, you can't really see it as a whole, in an objective way. With Phantom Moon I felt more like I was swimming, instead of just falling into the water."
Sheik believes Phantom Moon will have an impact on future recordings. "I think, in a way, because I've embraced all these different kinds of projects, it will allow me to do something unique on my next album for Atlantic. For me, the best part of the past year has been the feeling that I've done a lot of growing. At this point, I'm open to doing anything."
--Darren Davis, New York
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