"Whisper House," a new album by singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik '92, comes out Jan. 27, and this haunting song cycle is not to be missed.
Sheik is critically acclaimed for his work as a solo artist - he earned a Grammy nomination for his 1996 single "Barely Breathing." More recently, he has made a successful foray into theater, composing the score for the Grammy and Tony award-winning 2006 rock musical "Spring Awakening."
Though the new album has its roots in the American singer-songwriter tradition, it also contains some innovative and quirky choices in theme and orchestration, making it stylistically consistent with the rest of Sheik's work.
Sheik's understated vocals and guitar-playing are wonderfully matched with the sounds of singer-keyboardist Holly Brook. Their ethereal voices call, respond and intertwine, binding together the mysterious narrative of "Whisper House."
Sheik wrote "Whisper House" from the perspective of a ghost, a "person who died in 1912 who is looking down on the human pathos and kind of mocking it," he told The Herald.
"It was fun to write these songs because I'm not writing them as Duncan Sheik, but from the perspective of this whimsically malevolent ghost," he said.
Sheik's work is highly collaborative, and he describes his professional relationships in terms that demonstrate his seriousness about his craft and his respect for others' talents and contributions.
"I've always worked with a British orchestrator," Sheik said. "His name is Simon Hale, and he's worked on all the theater, movie and album projects I've worked on. I'll usually let Simon do his thing. I'll record an initial version of a song and I'll send it to him. He's really a genius and I trust him to do what he does."
Sheik's relaxed and respectful artistic approach was also evident in his description of co-performer Brook, who toured with him for several years as an opening act. "She kind of joined the band," he said. "When I started 'Whisper House,' she was my go-to
person."
Sheik is working with Brooke, whom he calls "an amazing songwriter," to produce her own album. "I let her write her own songs, her lyrics and her music, and it's just helping her manifest her vision," he said.
For someone whose career has been defined by performance, Sheik was surprisingly averse to taking center stage during his undergraduate years at Brown. In performance, he would provide accompaniment for various lead singers, including future songwriting stars Lisa Loeb '90 and Elizabeth Mitchell '90, who would go on to form the band Liz and Lisa.
Sheik reserved his own singing for the privacy of the recording studio in the music building. "As a singer I was self-conscious and shy," he said. "The Underground was pretty much the main place I performed, but it was guitar for Liz and Lisa.... Even after I had a gold record and a Grammy nomination, I couldn't get a gig there," he joked.
Sheik maintains a cool head about his success. "My advice always has to do with trying to forge your own voice and your own uniqueness that is as eccentric as you want it to be," he said, offering advice to undergraduates entering the arts world. "It's never a good idea to second-guess what the public wants to hear. You should not be doing it for commercial reasons; it should be something that moves you."
When asked about his current connection to Brown, Sheik said, "I still have a lot of great friends that were my roommates or friends from Brown that I still hang out with that I'm probably sure will be friends for life."
"There's a creative network of people who went to Brown in the actor community," he said. "There's the writer-producer Hollywood group. It's a Brown mafia, really."
