"One of Those Moments:" Sheik at the Boulton

The popular music genre likes to chew up and spit out artists that become “too interior.” The line between accessible and introspective is difficult enough to navigate – but what if the goal is to inject the occasional insight?

Last Saturday night at the YMCA Boulton Center, a man dressed in a dapper white coat and red sneakers has proven that he’s figured it out.

In his song “Half-Life,” Duncan Sheik writes

I'm awake in the afternoon
I fell asleep in the living room
And it's one of those moments
When everything is so clear
Before the truth goes back into hiding
I want to decide 'cause it's worth deciding
To work on finding something more than this fear

The show kicked off with the appropriately interior “Such Reveries.” Reveries tend to be the stuff of Sheik lyric-writing. He will feint one direction – typically with an accessible pop phrasing, then throw a gentle curve or raise troubling doubts.

The ocean's waves loomed as large as could be
They threw us below but you held onto me
You held onto me, oh such reveries

You’re thinking simple ocean embrace -- like a thousand other song lyrics, but then he sings

Don't listen to me
It's my imagination
I don't even know you
It never happened

The song is contemplative, and acoustically dramatic in this version a pattern to be repeated often throughout the evening.

Next up was a song from Sheik’s most recent work, “Oh My My,” which is about a one-night stand – maybe. “Oh My My” has a very pop-friendly chorus – so much so that Sheik seemed uncomfortable in leaving it with an anthem-like feel, and so ends the song on a more reflective tone. 

A one night stand with Sheik would be exciting, but have an ambivalent aftertaste.

Sheik, taking note of the YMCA logos at the Boulton, related a story from when he was 8 and staying with his Dad in New Jersey. After dutifully shoveling snow, he was rewarded with a gift of the then-popular Village People song. The following year, all of nine years old, he recruited a few classmates to perform it in South Carolina. It was evidence of a certain determination that propels a career

Don’t Do [Just] Sadness

His next song, “Don’t Do Sadness” was from Sheik’s rock musical production of Spring Awakening, which won Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations and then a 2008 Grammy for Best Musical Show album. The Sheik – Steven Sater collaboration featured very Sheik-like lyrics, including the memorable laundry reference (reminiscent of Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride” lyric: “Last night I had the strangest dream / I sailed away to China in a little row boat to find ya / And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned”):

So maybe I should be some kind of laundry line
Hang their things on me, and I will swing 'em dry
You just wave in the sun through the afternoon and then see
They come to set you free beneath the rising moon

Sheik’s performance was powerfully strengthened by two additional musicians. Providing keyboard, including the Boulton’s grand, glockenspiel and laptop (MIDI, M-Audio controller) was Jason Hart. On drums (and the occasional laptop sequence) was Doug Yowell (@DougYowell), who’s also been part of that productive nexus that includes Suzanne Vega and Gerry Leonard. The trio of Sheik, Hart and Yowell managed, during the occasional thunderous “B” sections (more on that later) of Sheik’s song shape idiom, to set the Boulton Center’s roof to rockin’.

The next song was the new “Summer Morning,” which Sheik explained came about in London when he decided to take a rejuvenating run after a long bus ride. Initially it cleared his head, but a disconcerting altered state came upon him, resulting in an isolationist allusion to a “perfect darkness.” This was followed, not coincidentally perhaps, by “Stripped,” a Luddite-favoring Depeche Mode cover (“Take my hand / back to the land”), and “I Wish for the Sun,” a piece whose Beatles influence Sheik later acknowledged. The themes of inspiration, insight and irony continued with “Half-Life,” from his Daylight album:

Wake me, I wanna see the daylight
Save me from this half-life
Let's you and I escape
Escape from time

The song concludes with the pop meme, “C’mon, let’s fall in love,” but for close readers of Sheik’s work, the damage had been done.

Grand Designs

The characteristic contemplative mood remained as keyboardist Hart provided a surprisingly realistic, unobtrusive violin patch to the next song, followed by “Half a Room,” Sheik’s riff on an Italian hotel room cut in half as a metaphor for achievement cut down to size, as he learns that “all my grand designs were victims of their times.” With “This is Not an Exit,” the trio offered the Bay Shore audience a taste of American Psycho, which he’s been working on in London for the past several months. Sheik told the Huff Post he thought the song to be some of his best work.

It was more than half-way into the evening’s performance when he picked up his Fender Tele (paired with a Fender Deluxe Reverb) for “Distant Lover,” and it was worth the wait. The Tele filled the room with a soaring, satisfying sustain, which was repeated for an all-too-short guitar break in the song’s middle section.

Sheik’s encore set concluded the evening with what he laughingly called an R & B version of “Barely Breathing” which an enthusiastic Bay Shore audience sang along with him, and finally a cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” (trivia: #376 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs).

Moments from a 'Court and Spark' Canon

Sheik’s the sort of musician who would cover Joni Mitchell’s “Court and Spark” (on Brighter/Later) in order to taste Joni Mitchell’s turn of phrase. But in his own writing, and it’s a treacherous generalization, Sheik songs often have an A-B-A structure. The first “A” is an observation or casual commentary, followed by an arresting (in this performance, sometimes triple forte) “B” section, whose high wattage demands as much attention asthe subtle lyric-writing. The final “A” in this formula returns to a questioning frame – as if to rebuke anyone who intended to leave the song with a simple understanding of its meaning.

Sheik’s urgently looking for moments when everything’s clear (“Half-Life”), but doesn’t trust them when he comes upon them. This is an instinct to be fervently prized in a songwriter. The evening was one of those moments.

The Boulton Center's next performer: Josh Ritter on June 21.