Duncan Sheik

White Limousine

Street Date: January 24, 2006

White Limousine, Duncan Sheik’s new release on Zoë/Rounder, is his most realized work yet -- a set of catchy, thoughtful compositions that are pro-love and anti-war, both perfectly simple and breathtakingly vast. 

Though he is known to many for his gold records, Grammy nomination and year-long ride on the pop charts with “Barely Breathing,” Sheik’s mainstream success may belie the depth of his work:  he has scored for film and for the stage, produced ambitious records for himself and his peers and captured audiences around the world with his remarkable voice and songcraft.

Sheik’s new record represents the latest turn from an artist who has always avoided predictability, despite commercial triumphs and critical acclaim.  “My politics are known,” says Sheik, a Nichiren Buddhist who has initiated humanitarian projects in Albania and Cuba, performed in innumerable benefits for hurricane relief, women’s issues and the homeless, and participated in 2004’s Concerts For Change. “I've resisted putting those thoughts to music until now.  But there’s a point where not doing so seems irresponsible.”

Enter White Limousine, an album that fuses the epic balladry and tuneful love songs for which Sheik is known with visceral comments on war, media and consumer culture.

“Hey Casanova” is a fresh take on the death of a ladies’ man that reveals one of the record’s central themes.  Sheik revisits the image throughout, haunted by a former love in “I Don’t Believe in Ghosts,” remembering a perfect day on “I Wouldn’t Mind,” bartering for forgiveness on “The Dawn’s Request” and finding some solace in “Land,” a song which serves as fulcrum for the album’s controlling ideas of love of war.  “I’m worried about the world,” he sings. "Worried, too, about a girl / but that’s nothing new.”

If the expanse and sonic perspicuity of this new album make White Limousine to Sheik’s canon what So was to Peter Gabriel’s, the song “White Limousine,” though utterly dissimilar, may be Sheik’s “Born In The USA” – due to its incessant catchiness, one can easily imagine the sentiment behind this ironic, extended metaphor for Western excess being misinterpreted and sung by drunken revelers, heads emerging from a white stretch Hummer.  So too the uplifting hook of “Shopping,” which masks a dark, if humorous, take on a culture’s insatiable want to buy.  But with the chilling, mournful “Star Field on Red Lines,” Sheik eschews satire completely and produces what may be the most gut-wrenching musical comment yet on wartime’s ultimate sacrifice. 

“Because this record was essentially finished before there was any partnership with a record label, I was able to write and record these songs to satisfy a specific set of aesthetic and conceptual criteria of my own choosing, as opposed to trying to satisfy the commercial needs of a corporation,” says Sheik.  “This was liberating because there wasn’t even an unconscious attempt to record these songs for what I now believe to be the wrong reasons.  Then, when the folks at Rounder records expressed an interest in putting out the record without making any unwanted changes, I felt great about forming a partnership with them.”               

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Included in the White Limousine package are two discs, labeled MINE and YOURS. MINE is Duncan’s version of these songs; YOURS is a DVD that enables listeners to create their own versions. Using the software provided, the listener can isolate and remix White Limousine’s many sonic layers, as provided by guitarist Gerry Leonard (Spooky Ghost, David Bowie) the rhythm section of drummers Doug Yowell (Suzanne Vega,) Jay Bellerose (Beck) and bassist Jeff Allen, mixer Kevin Killen (Elvis Costello, U2) and Sheik himself, whose multi-instrumental talents and grasp of modern recording technology enabled him to be his own producer this time out. 

This may be the first time that a recording artist has released the entire contents of their album, instrument by instrument, giving the listener the ability to re-imagine the songs as they see fit.  (See more on the DVD, attached.)

The road to White Limousine has been a long one.  Duncan Sheik’s self-titled debut and it’s follow-up Humming (Atlantic), both produced by Rupert Hine, attracted legions of dedicated enthusiasts to Sheik’s camp, where they found a progressive artist more interested in blazing a path similar to influences like Nick Drake, David Sylvian and Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis than in recycling classic rock or making pop hits.

Switching gears on the mostly acoustic Phantom Moon, (Nonesuch) Sheik collaborated with playwright/lyricist Steven Sater, with whom the songwriter would create two more productions he calls “anti-musicals:” a musically modern reading of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Nightingale and a reworking of the 19th Century playwright Frank Wedekind’s “Spring Awakening,” which premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center in 2005 and will have it’s first full production in 2006 at the prestigious Atlantic Theater in New York.  Daylight (Atlantic), Sheik’s fourth solo effort, was a successful pop hybrid that combined his knack for infectious melodies and contemplative lyrics with lush orchestrations, producing another single, “On A High.” 

Sheik’s songs and scores have appeared in several feature films, including “Great Expectations,” “A Home At The End Of The World,” “Transamerica” and “Amazing Grace” (The Jeff Buckley documentary). He scored the New York Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park production of “Twelfth Night,” and composed the music for the Magic Theater’s upcoming production of “Another Golden Rome” in San Francisco.  Sheik has also produced recordings for Micah Green, Chris Garneau, and David Poe, and is currently collaborating with Poe, drummer Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright), and songwriters Morgan Taylor and Fil Krohnengold on a New York-based rock band project, to be released in late 2006.

For more information, contact Veronique Cordier, V Entertainment, 908.889.6639 |Ventnet@aol.com

www.duncansheik.com