Portrait Of The Artist As A Bleak Older Man Who Just Doesn\u2019t Care What Anyone Thinks Any More.<\/p>\n
Look. Duncan Sheik has won a Tony (for\u00a0Spring Awakening<\/i>) and has been nominated for a Grammy (for \u201cBarely Breathing\u201d). He managed to turn Bret Easton Ellis \u2013 freaking\u00a0American Psycho\u00a0<\/i>\u2013 into a successful musical. I won\u2019t say he\u2019s got nothing left to prove, but he\u2019s an excellent example of\u00a0homo performeris multitalentedentis<\/i>. So when he put out his first album of original songs in six years,\u00a0Legerdemain<\/i>, in 2015, the one thing you could probably guarantee is that it would be exactly what he wanted it to be \u2013 no more, no less.<\/p>\n
What it is is bleak. Cool. Unflinching.\u00a0Legerdemain<\/i>\u00a0is almost two EPs stuck together; the first half is electronic, with synthesizers and digital beats, while the second half is more stripped down, finding Sheik channeling his inner Nick Drake-fanboy persona. Where they come together is in the bitter and basic truths that Sheik refuses to sugar-coat. When the first song on your release is \u201cSelling Out\u201d with its matter-of-fact coda (\u201cCause everything I\u2019m telling you is a song I\u2019m selling you \/ Oh oh, oh oh, oh oh \/ You bought it all \/ You bought it, bought it \/ Even when I was selling out \/ You bought it, bought it \/ Even when I was selling out\u201d) then it is highly unlikely the rest will be sweetness and light.<\/p>\n
Other highlights: \u201cAvalanche\u201d seems to be about the inevitability of ecological collapse. \u201cBirmingham\u201d is life as seen through the eyes of a sneak thief and pickpocket. \u201cDistant Lovers\u201d is a dark paean to the difficult side of emotional entanglements. And just when the darkness gets to be too much, \u201cSo There\u201d muses on life, our place in the cosmos, and What It Might All Mean; it doesn\u2019t come to any conclusion, really, but at least it doesn\u2019t come to a condemnation.<\/p>\n
Legerdemain<\/i>\u00a0is, in the end, a solid piece of work. If you\u2019re looking for \u201cBarely Breathing\u201d, you need to look elsewhere; that was twenty years ago, and there\u2019s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. If you\u2019re looking for something that addresses the dark, shadowed world we live in in a mature and thoughtful manner, this is a very good place to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":33369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7082],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-45185","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-duncan-sheik","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45185"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}