Passing Ghosts and Scattered Leaves
He’s credited as “Celebrity,” and he appears on-screen for only a few seconds. Blink and you might miss it. And even if you don’t blink, what I understand is that you might miss it, regardless. You might not recognize Duncan Sheik in the 2003 film Uptown Girls.
In the scene, he approaches the film’s protagonist, portrayed by Brittany Murphy, on a busy city street in front of a club, vying for her attention, and if I am remembering this correctly from the only time, and recently, too, that I have watched Uptown Girls, he pleads for her to come visit him in the recording studio. She rebuffs him—showing no interest, really, as he then steps back out of frame, defeated.
You might not recognize Duncan Sheik in the 2003 film Uptown Girls in the same way that, if you are of a certain age or have enough awareness of pop culture from a specific era, you will, near the end of the film, most certainly recognize appearances by Dave Navarro and Mark McGrath. But that is, I think, because of the way Navarro and McGrath both positioned themselves firmly within the zeitgeist of the early 2000s in a way where they existed as personas outside of contemporary popular music, which is something that Sheik did not do.
Maybe this is not the case now—and maybe it wasn’t, then, but I get the impression Sheik, for the first decade of his career, took himself entirely too seriously.
“Holy shit is that Duncan Sheik,” I blurted out, as he appeared on screen. “What?!,” my best friend, Alyssa, responded. We were watching the movie at her behest—one of many movies that are beloved by her, but that I had never watched. “No,” she continued. “Really?”
I was confident, though. His face. The sound of his speaking voice—similar in tenor to how he sings. The well-coiffed black hair on top of his head.
Duncan Sheik.
“Celebrity.”
And I am, of course, already looking for something where there is, more than likely, nothing.
Because Duncan Sheik was, in that brief moment he appears on screen in Uptown Girls, playing a role. A presumably scripted exchange. But. What I can acknowledge, and perhaps you can, too, is that the way in which he is rebuffed or rejected, and the way he appears defeated—flummoxed, really, by Murphy’s complete disinterest in him—this is an extension, of sorts, of how Sheik portrayed himself, at least early on in his career, within his lyrics. A kind of abhorrent toxic masculinity that was always there, woven into the fabric of a number of his songs—specifically from his self-titled debut. And it is only with enough growth and time and understanding that you can listen, and hear it, and in hearing it, it becomes apparent how poorly these depictions have aged.
And you can hear it, too, at times, in Phantom Moon. Though, it is worth noting, early on here, that Sheik is not credited with writing the lyrics—Only the music.
Perhaps these depictions, regardless of who has penned them, are ultimately inescapable.
*
And I am often thinking about seasons. This much I have told you before. The way time passes, yes. Days into weeks. Weeks into months. Then years. But if you are like me in how you listen to music—you listen, yes, sure. But. You also give thought and consideration. And in that, perhaps you associate certain artists, or songs, or albums, with specific times of year.
Perhaps you make an association with a season.
This much I have told you before.
Because sometimes this consideration is based on linear time. You hear a song, or an album, or you are first introduced to an artist at a certain time of year, and that becomes where it lives within you. But sometimes this consideration is based on a feeling. Not what the album or song sounds like but what those things feel like. The evocative nature. Does it evoke the sensation of a specific time of year. Of changes to our surroundings. Of pasts we romanticize. Is there a wistfulness. Is it bittersweet. Is it melancholy. Is there a warmth. An invitation.
This much I have told you before and this, certainly, does not make me a unique individual by any means but within time, and within seasons, I am most compelled by the autumn. The gradual arrival of a crispness in the air. The robust oranges and reds, when the leaves turn, and the moments when you are fortunate enough to witness the leaves when they surrender. When they let go of the branch that held them. Caught in a breeze. Tumbling, and scattering, in slow motion, to the ground below.
This much I have told you before—of the seasons, I am certain there are more albums, or songs, or artists, that I associate with the autumn than other times of year. And, yes, perhaps it is because that is the time of year when I first heard the song, or first listened to an album, or was introduced to an artist. Often, though, the connection is based on a feeling. What does the song, or the album, feel like.
Now the children play through these shorter days
Does it feel like the slow fade of summer’s kiss and the warmth of the sun, mingling with the slight chill in the air? Does it feel like the days becoming shorter? The brilliant fury of the turning leaves?
It was released in February of 2001, and I would have bought a copy of it, more or less blindly, around two months later. An album can be representative of a time and place, certainly. The moment when you perhaps were not listening to it for the first time, but the instance, when it resonated with you in an unanticipated way.
But, this much I have told you before. What compels me most is how an album feels when you listen. What does it evoke. Where does it take you. When does it take you.
It was released in February of 2001 but Phantom Moon, singer and songwriter Duncan Sheik’s third full-length album, is an autumn album.
*
Duncan Sheik does not seem like one to indulge in, or embrace, the idea of nostalgia.
His fifth full-length, the long-gestating and inherently political White Limousine, was released 20 years ago, originally arriving in January, 2006. I remember putting in a special order for it at the Borders in Dubuque, Iowa—where I was living at the time, and I remember driving over, after I got off of work, to pick it up on the Tuesday it was released. I remember the way it remained in the CD player, in my car, for so much of that unforgiving winter.
Sheik’s self-titled debut—the album that includes the song “Barely Breathing,” turned 30 in May. Sonically, a product of its time, and thematically, it is now a very difficult album to reconcile with—two years ago, it was remastered and reissued on vinyl for the first time, in part, for Record Store Day.
Neither of these anniversaries was mentioned, even in passing, on Sheik’s personal Instagram page, where he is most active. So it is not surprising, then, that the 25th anniversary of his third album, Phantom Moon, came and went, unacknowledged.
What I can understand, or at least have the language to better articulate now, is that Phantom Moon, like its predecessor, 1998’s Humming, is not an inaccessible album. Not really. Both can be challenging records, and I am hesitant to say that on both, Sheik becomes less and less concerned with the idea of pop songwriting because that isn’t entirely accurate. For as moody, and solemn, and sparse as Phantom Moon can be as a whole, Sheik, as a songwriter—and here, again, he is credited as only writing the music—he cannot outrun his knack for a well-assembled pop song, even when he wishes to present it to us, as listeners, a little differently.
What I can understand, or at least have the language to better articulate now, is that Phantom Moon is a logical continuation of the inward turn Sheik began exploring on Humming. Anchored by robust instrumental textures, it features sweeping and often dramatic string accompaniment from the London Symphony Orchestra—and for someone who, five years later, would be credited as “Celebrity,” in a small, cameo role, the songwriting on Humming is self-deprecating and often snarky, as Sheik seemingly wishes to push back, not against the notion of fame, or success, overall, but certainly the notoriety gained through a hit single. Neither Humming nor Phantom Moon, I think, intentionally alienate listeners, but they are both records that make an ask of you—at times, a bigger ask than others.
Phantom Moon is one of the earliest collaborations between Sheik and writer Steven Sater—the two met, in 1998, in Soka Gakkai International, a Nichiren Buddhist organization, and they began working together shortly thereafter when Sater approached Sheik about writing the music to accompany lyrics for Umbrage, a play he was writing—the play would later be revised and retitled Arms on Fire, when it was staged in 2013.
The two, in the years after Phantom Moon, would work together on the development of the musical Spring Awakening, which premiered Off-Broadway in May of 2006, and opened on Broadway in December of 2006, running for three years, winning seven Tony Awards, and the Grammy Award for “Musical Theater Album,” in 2008.
And there is, of course, a theatricality to the songs on Phantom Moon. I hesitate to refer to it as a quiet album, because even though there are these hushed moments where it barely rises above a pensive whisper, there are places where it is rather stirring, or sweeping—an album that in being performed primarily with acoustic instrumentation, manages, with grace, to operate from this place of restraint. This theatricality, though, is most apparent in the lyricism—written by Sater, there are implications of a loose narrative that attempts to tie the songs together, or weave a narrative through from beginning to end. These are story songs, though. They tell stories. Many of them are still written from the first person, but they are certainly not as direct, or as personal, in comparison to more traditional pop songs. There are characters and personas adopted, and the tone with which the lyrics are delivered oscillates between conversational, and grand declarations.
Phantom Moon isn’t an “experimental album” in the way you might think if you hear that descriptor. A risk, maybe, more than anything. In the way that Humming was a risky and perhaps temperamental, or precocious second album—lengthy, with a number of songs sprawling beyond six minutes, and singles, yes, sure, but nothing as immediately infectious or ready for the radio the way “Barely Breathing” had been just two years prior. An album that asks a lot of its listeners—to give consideration to the intricacies of how it is produced and arranged, but also to the more thoughtful, inward songwriting. Phantom Moon is a continuation of that ask, because in its theatricality—in these songs being part of a larger story, and taking on these personas and characters- it could keep listeners at an arm’s length.
Sheik, at the time, was signed to Atlantic Records—a subsidiary of Warner Brothers, but Phantom Moon was issued through the idiosyncratic imprint—also, a subsidiary of Warner—Nonesuch, which just the next year, would release Wilco’s seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Sheik, before departing Atlantic, released three albums for the label—his last for them, Daylight, arriving in September of 2002, and was a return to more straightforward pop songwriting and glossier production.
The internet can’t tell you everything, even with as vast as it is. Things go undocumented, or documented without enough detail. Information, however banal, falls through the cracks. I tell you all of that to tell you this—Phantom Moon was a risk for Sheik, who was aware, while recording it, that it was not going to be a commercial success by any means. Humming, comparatively to his self-titled debut, was a modest success–the artist, wanting to be taken seriously, pushing back against perhaps what was expected of him and his sudden celebrity.
The internet can’t tell you everything and I feel like I read an interview with Sheik where he tried to prepare Atlantic Records for what he wished to do creatively—something to the extent of, I’m writing the music, a playwright is penning the lyrics, it’s primarily acoustic, you guys probably aren’t going to want to release it.
*
And this is slightly embarrassing to recall, now, but it is a part of the story, regardless. And, for as much as I am often able to remember—things that are, truly, insignificant, I am uncertain how I found myself here, but there was a time at the beginning of 2006, and even beyond, when I frequented a Duncan Sheik message board.
There was a section of the board where another member had uploaded a number of unreleased songs—Sheik’s cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” a relatively crude sounding mp3 of the slow burning “Loves A Sinner,” his then-recent collaboration with another singer and songwriter, David Poe, and other songs that were written by both Sheik and Sater, intended for additional theatrical projects, like the triumphant, sprawling “Song of The Human Heart,” from The Nightingale.
And for as moody, and solemn, and sparse, as Phantom Moon ends up being, as a whole, Sheik cannot outrun his knack for a well-assembled pop song, even when his wish is to present it to us, as listeners, a little differently. Because there are moments throughout the album where the moodiness and solemnness recede, and in those songs, at least in terms of their arranging, that would not sound out of place on his first two records, are revealed.
“Mirror In The Heart” is one of those. And it is a song that, on an album that is not invested, or interested, in the idea of a single, hit or otherwise, was ultimately sent to radio stations as a means of promoting the album, in the form of an alternate mix—a copy of which was amongst the material I had downloaded from the message board.
Something that I end up noticing, specifically in contemporary popular music, is the way a word is said. The way it might be stretched, or sustained. The way it hangs. And in that, is there a meaning conveyed. Are we meant to feel, or understand something more, or something larger, that is unspoken.
I think about, and perhaps I made too much of it then and perhaps I am again making too much of it now, but I think about the way in Muna’s “Kind of Girl,” Katie Gavin sings the “dandelion.” She pronounces it, maybe as a means of being cute, or saccharine, in an effort to offset the emotional gravity of the song, but she puts the emphasis in the middle of the word, almost splitting it in two. “Dandy lion.”
Something that I end up noticing, specifically in contemporary popular music, is the way a word is said. And I tell you all of that to tell you this—there is something about the way, in this song, that Duncan Sheik sings, and overemphasizes the syllables, to the word “mirror.”
Perhaps it is done to offer more clarity, or articulation, so the word isn’t lost, or so it lands more pointedly within the chorus. Perhaps it is truly just how Sheik says, or sings, the word. It is just something that, in listening analytically to Phantom Moon for the first time, I noticed, and was not able to unhear.
For an album that is as turned inward, and as moody as Phantom Moon is, or wishes to portray itself as, “Mirror in The Heart” is a moment where there is a surprising jubilance—a song that, eventually doesn’t get caught up in its own exuberance, but does, in time, grow to become something rollicking and triumphant in the heights it ascends to.
Phantom Moon is not built around the idea of restraint—not entirely. But it rarely strays from a certain level of intensity, and volume. That is perhaps in part because of the instrumentation favored. Perhaps because of the moody, solemn nature of many of the arrangements, and the lyricism. “Mirror in The Heart” is one of the few places where, structurally, there is this gradual build, with elements continually being introduced as the song unfolds, in an effort to take us to something larger. Something grand. Shimmering. One of the more enormous moments on the record. It opens with not dueling acoustic guitar lines, but one serving as a means of propulsion, and the other offering punctuation and emphasis, both of which swirl underneath Sheik’s warm, rich voice and the observations and declarations he’s sending out.
“Mirror in The Heart” is a pop song in the sense that it knows exactly what it’s doing, and knows exactly when to do it—when to push itself out, and up, a little more, ascending and expanding, to create that anthemic, powerful moment when the chorus arrives. The stakes seemingly higher because of the theatricality that is present throughout so much of the album. Some light percussive elements fold into the background, as Sheik and his bandmates slide into the chorus, alongside the piano. It’s in the second verse, then, that the slight pinging of a drum, and a shuffling rhythm are added—never overpowering, and just enough to give the song a little more weight as it strides forward, pulling back on the shimmer, and bombast, during the verses, but truly allowing Sheik to soar for the chorus.
A pop song in the sense that it knows exactly what it’s doing and exactly when to do it, it is still anecdotally sparser, in terms of instrumentation, which is why the “Radio Mix” of “Mirror in The Heart” clumsily shoehorns in a more traditional sounding drum kit rhythm from the moment it opens—then over punctuates with the addition of a slide guitar in between lines, in an effort to make it perhaps more accessible to a casual listener—one who does not have the patience for the eventual introduction of each element.
And there is this theatricality across Phantom Moon. A sense of drama. A kind of literacy that I stop just short of saying is absent from Sheik’s lyricism, but is also certainly not as present, or noticeable, as it is here when someone else penning the words that he sings. I also am remiss to say that there is a “fantastical” nature to some of Sater’s writing, but he does guide us through a world created, or implied, with these extremely evocative phrases, that weave together loose narratives or circumstances, ultimately placing us within a moment between two people that is already well underway—the conversational aspect, leading then to a moment when a character, on stage, breaks into song.
The first thing you hear on “Mirror in The Heart,” which is also, within where it is placed in the album’s run, kind of a final exhalation before the somber conclusion—the first thing you hear is Sheik’s voice, unaccompanied, belting out this vivid opening line. “There is a swan white curtain,” he exclaims. “Somewhere within the sky,” he continues. “It’s known of every sermon, every anguished cry—the howls of hopeless people, frightened and alone.”
And still, within the first verse, the idea of the mirror, and how Sheik says the word, really placing an emphasis on the r’s, weighing it down in a sense—but the mirror, as a theme, is introduced. A “spotless silver mirror that hangs within the moon,” he explains, before elaborating in the chorus. “Some may pray to their mirrors—some may kneel before the sun,” he sings, his voice ringing out. “Me, I say there’s a minor in the heart of everyone.”
And, again, there is this theatricality. The lyrics, less personal, or direct, yes. But the phrasing is still stirring, or captivating. Here, especially. “Mirror in The Heart” in the last 25 years is a song that, when listening to this album, I specifically gravitated towards. It is a song that I can acknowledge though—the infectiousness built into it, hidden within the sparser instrumentation. And the way it, in both the imagery used, and in the moments of emphasis, is a song that, within the context of, for lack of a better description, a play that was never written but is still being performed, its place that wants to offer just a glimmer of hope—hope around us, yes. But hope from within.
The mirror in the heart.
*
Once you hear it, you cannot unhear it. Or, at least, I was not able to. And it has of course made me less and less interested in revisiting. It isn’t just in the toxic masculinity that is depicted in “Barely Breathing.” It is elsewhere, too, on Sheik’s self-titled debut. The album’s first track is titled “She Runs Away.” The jokes write themselves. The second song, the sprawling “In The Absence of Sun,” includes the lyrics, “I don’t want to say I’m just a friend—I don’t want to wait around here ‘cause you don’t want to feel no pain again.”
The album’s closing track, the brooding “Little Hands,” is perhaps the worst of them all in how Sheik both portrays himself as scorned by the woman whom he casts as the song’s antagonist. Maybe it was intended to be satirical, at the time. Doubtful. It certainly doesn’t land well at all, now, 30 years later.
And you can hear this, too, at times, in Phantom Moon. Fascinating, really, because Sheik did not write the lyrics to the album. Only the music. Though perhaps these depictions, regardless of who has penned them, of a broken-hearted man, are ultimately inescapable.
And perhaps it is because of the subject matter, or perhaps it is because of the delicate and deliberate way the song itself unfolds, the slow and tumbling “Far Away” is a song that is, lyrically, one of the more accessible and is able to transcend the theatricality of the album’s conceit—and musically, in its organic wooziness, lends itself to the often robust arrangements from Sheik’s previous records.
One of the elements of Phantom Moon, as a whole, that is worth noting is the commitment or emphasis on mostly acoustic instrumentation, and a sparsity—with many of the songs lacking what you could call a traditional percussive element. So when a song does feature a steadier, or stronger rhythm, coming from a drum kit, or an amplified instrument—those elements are rather apparent in how they land within the gentleness of what is underneath. And what is most prevalent in how “Far Away” continues to gently stir and tumble forward with the brushed but confident ripples of the drum kit, is the intricate, sometimes dreamy, sometimes bluesy lead guitar from Bill Frisell. And electric guitar, yes. It is amplified, though played through a clean-sounding tone as it literally meanders, or walks, through the entirety of the song.
I had never, until now, critically considered the amount of space that the song gives to Frisell and his playing—his contributions offer a kind of shimmer to “Far Away,” and are never really “too much,” but the instrument is very present, weaving in and out of the other pieces to the song, as well as Sheik’s bold vocals, where he explores a lower register at first on the opening lines, before allowing it to ascend within the dramatic flares that smolder within the second half, as it grows in intensity.
The kind of scorn, or heartbreak, that Sheik describes in “Far Away” is far less overtly toxic, or troubling, when compared to the material from his debut—again, it wasn’t written by him, and it is sung in character—one who is addressing another very directly, in a way that is ultimately theatrical in how it arrives. There is a presentation that occurs in nearly every song, and in that, there are songs that are more difficult than others to extract from the loose narrative and allow them to stand on their own. “Far Away,” in its more gentle, slow-moving arrangement, and within its themes, is one of the few songs that does work independently, and is surprisingly infectious in how it follows a pop song structure, albeit at a glacial pace.
“If again you wander,” Sheik begins quietly. “If too soon, again, you wander—far away. Let this too be with you—an old tune somewhere within you,” he continues. And perhaps the most interesting moments in “Far Away” are the fleeting ones—these brief moments between verse and chorus, and the instrumentation is pulled back slightly, wavering against Sheik’s rich, tender voice. “Falling through the autumn evening—every darkened street,” he sings, conjuring such vivid imagery. “Calling to forgotten feeling—the passing ghosts and scattered leaves.”
Though when Sheik returns to this melody, within the second half of the song, the lyrics are less evocative in terms of imagery, and more in line with the heartbreak and woes of the protagonist. “Calling to some distant longing, another soul within your sheets,” he scoffs.
There is a longing, of course, that surges throughout “Far Away.” A want. Someone that was, at one time, perhaps in reach, but is no longer. “If again you love him,” Sheik pines in the chorus. “If, too soon again you love him, far away,” he continues. “Let this too be with him humming smoothly when you kiss him.” The longing, and this want, then takes the form of a plea, as the song swells theatrically, and beautifully—a plea both hopeful, and desperate. “If some day you love me,” Sheik declares, then a few lines later. “Let the words within you whisper to you how I miss you,” with the reprising titular phrase seeing both as a means of pushing the protagonist, and the person they long for, further apart, but also as a dramatic kind of device within the song.
“Far Away,” as it swells to a peak, recedes quickly, but in that, offers no resolve, with the final lines serving another plea—the one that lingers as the instrumentation glistens and then fades behind Sheik’s voice. “Calling to you heart and stealing all the want away.”
*
Something I think about, and perhaps I think about it more often than I should, is how I might have heard about something, or been introduced to it, in the past. In a time before social media. In a time before the internet was as fast-moving as it is now. I didn’t always move this quickly. There was a time when the internet was not in its infancy but it was just beginning to toddle. Clunky. This is just an element of the past that I do find genuinely interesting to reflect on. Did I see a print advertisement or read a review in a music magazine?
Did I catch the video on MTV? VH-1?
That was, more than likely, where I was introduced to Sheik, in the spring of 1997. The video for “Barely Breathing.” Then, purchasing the CD single from a Best Buy, which was, during my teenage years, where I spent more of my money than I can fathom.
“In The Absence of Sun,” for some reason, appeared on the soundtrack to the Val Kilmer action film The Saint—the movie, when I eventually rented it from the video store, I didn’t even like very much, and I am truly unable to remember why it was a CD I felt like at the age of 14, I needed to own.
It is humbling, also, to admit that at the age of 13, or 14—painfully shy, overweight, unaware of how depressed I was and would be throughout my adolescence, there was a part of me that, in my experiences with unrequited crushes, felt acknowledged by the sentiments of “Barely Breathing.”
The fall of 1998. Sheik’s second album, Humming is released. I remember seeing a review of it in Rolling Stone. I remember the cumulative hours spent in the “Entertainment and Electronics” section of my small town’s Wal-Mart, seeing the CD, safely housed in one of those plastic, anti-theft cases, filled amongst the S’s.
It would have been two years later, probably, when I bought used copies of both Duncan Sheik and Humming—I still have them. They’ve somehow traveled with me, at least physically, through time. Surviving four years of college and the two decades after. I think about them. Maybe not often, but often enough. They are not albums I revisit with any frequency, though. Even with the dusty jewel cases still on a shelf somewhere in my home, neither of them is an album you can truly bring with you through time.
They do not grow with you.
There is still something about Duncan Sheik, as an artist, that fascinates me—and, yes, his output from the later half of his career has been uneven, or of diminishing returns at times, there are moments that do compel me so.
He is representative of a moment though. A lot of artists are. The moment when you first heard a song of theirs. Or bought their album. Or listened with more frequency.
Phantom Moon is representative of a moment, certainly. Or moments. Of a feeling. It was released in February of 2001 and I would have purchased it a few months later—a time when I would have been in a store, walking through the seemingly endless racks of CDs, and saw it, perhaps startled, or surprised by a new album from an artist I enjoyed.
It’s representative of a moment. Of listening to it in my car’s CD player, or my stereo at home. Of trying, even at the age of 17, to find my way into it. Not an inaccessible album, but in its nature, is more of an ask to the listener. Especially one less experienced.
A moment. A feeling. There’s a warmth that resonates throughout Phantom Moon. A record that I did, in time, find a way into. As much as I could. Enough so that it was amongst the CDs that I packed and brought with me in August, 2001, when I began my first year in college.
You associate certain artists, or songs, or albums, with specific times of year. With a season. This much I have told you before. And the consideration can be based on linear time, yes, but it is also based on a feeling. Not what an album sounds like. But what does it feel like. What kind of sensation or imagery does it evoke.
Where does it bring you back to. What moment in time. Because there is a quiet grandeur here. A splendor. A warmth. In how rich the textures are, and how intricate it all sounds, when swirled together with precision, Phantom Moon, even when it falters, and it does falter, but it feels like autumn. And it is, as Sheik is himself, representative of a past. A different time and place. One we might miss. Or romanticize in a way. One we do not long for necessarily, or wish to return to—we cannot, of course. It is long gone. But one that we reflect on, and understand it was formative.
*
Something that I had not realized about Phantom Moon, in 25 years of listening, is how many songs begin in a way that I can only articulate as beginning mid-sentence, or mid-conversation. Phrases that start with “and.” Like we are being dropped within the middle of something, already making place. This makes sense, I suppose, given the theatrical nature of the songwriting. They are songs that are, often, directed at someone. From one character, to another. The album, in a sense, is a collection of songs for play yet to be staged.
There’s something self-aware, at least in title, about “Sad Stephen’s Song,” with Sater writing himself, or a version of himself into the album’s moody, pensive centerpiece. A song that begins mid-sentence, and then asks a question.
“And there were mermaids—weren’t there,” Sheik begins. His voice quiet. Low. Resonant. Finding its place within the gentle, hypnotic pulls of the acoustic guitar strings underneath him.
There is an implied fantastical nature to an opening line like that—something imaginative. There isn’t an ask, really, but there is this willing suspension of disbelief as we are brought into the world that “Sad Stephen’s Song” is starting to craft through both the tone of the song, as well as the narrative that is slowly unfolding. There is something about it that offers an assurance, in just how gentle it is. But it is also mesmerizing in the deliberate rhythm it weaves for itself, with these additional flourishes, and punctuations, fluttering throughout.
The song begins with the interplay between Sheik’s acoustic guitar and Gerry Leonard’s lead melody coming from the steely, creeping strings of the dobro—Leonard, a longtime member of Sheik’s band, also provides these atmospheric ripples from the dulcimer, later in the song, which give it not a sense of urgency, exactly, but in the steadiness the song falls into with relative ease, crates a tension, albeit brief, is introduced and never really resolved.
Sheik, in the arranging, is able to sustain a sense of melancholy across “Sad Stephen,” crafting something that knows when to remain sparse or spectral, and when to swell, pushing through the tension with the swooning orchestral accompaniment. And the somber nature of the instrumentation, then, offers a reflection of Sater’s narrative.
There were mermaids. Sheik describes them as sweet and silver, with bronze and dusky hair. The mermaids beckon to Sater, within this portrait. “Come sad Stephen,” they tell him. “Come and play here,” the song continues, before Sheik adds, “You will love. You will be loved. You will grow up and do so much. You will be strong, You will be sun by all the mermaids.”
“Sad Stephen’s Song” is the longest track on Phantom Moon, and within the kind of fantastical world that Sater has placed us in, and the dramatic nature of the song itself—even in the place of reserve it operates from, the second half offers responses, and reflections, and in doing so, turns further inward through questions that the song is not interested in answering.
And there is the suggestion that Stephen has been distracted, or swayed, by the mermaids, from the introspection that occurs. “Was I wrong,” Sheik bellows. “Should I have run? I wanted it all—I wanted young,” he continues, before adding later in a remorseful tone. “Did I love? I didn’t care. Did I grow up? Well—unaware. And was I strong? And was I sung?”
There is something ghostly about “Sad Stephen’s Song.” It hangs, like the fog that it describes in one of the final lines—the narrator still grappling, “How do I haunt Trafalgar fog and find I still want so much,” Sheik sings, before the world that we’ve been brought into begins to evaporate with the simple utterance of “No more mermaids,” erasing the imagery we have imagined for ourselves. The song comes to a quiet end, and a contemplative one, with a sense of unease, or uncertainty still lingering long after the final notes of the guitar and dulcimer strings have disappeared.
*
It isn’t an homage, exactly. Not a direct one, anyway. But it is understood that Phantom Moon was inspired, or influenced, or simply tips its hat to Nick Drake’s final album, Pink Moon. Maybe it is apparent from the title. And there are similarities, I suppose—the primarily acoustic instrumentation. In interviews about Phantom Moon, around the time of its release, Sheik was sure to clarify that this was not a “folk record.”
Worth noting, then, is that Sheik, and guitarist Gerry Leonard, would perform Pink Moon—the Nick Drake album from 1972, in its entirety, through a small series of concerts on the East Coast, at the beginning of 2022—something they had, apparently, also done together, per an old blurb in Variety, in the year 2000.
There’s some video footage of the more recent performances of Pink Moon, from Sheik and Leonard, online, filmed from an audience member at a table near the stage at the City Winery in New York. I understand that Sheik is no longer as young as he once was—the black, floppy hair and fresh face that graced the front of his self-titled debut, or as the Celebrity in Uptown Girls. But the way he wears his age sometimes surprises me. His hair long and greying. Large glasses on his face. A goatee that feels adjacent to that of an antagonist in a melodrama. His body, changing over time.
There is a bit of uncertainty, or nervousness in both Sheik and Leonard in the video. There’s an audience, yes. But even in this, there is a surprising looseness. Not playful. But an understanding. The stakes are right where they need to be. Neither low nor high. Two old friends, and colleagues, running through the 11 songs of an album that has been something they’ve both carried through time.
I reiterate, both for myself, I think, and for you, that Phantom Moon is not an inaccessible album. But. It does take time. It asks you to have patience, and I think, regardless of how well it has aged, or how it has or has not grown with me over my lifetime, something admirable about it, and about hearing it shortly after its original release, is that it presents you with challenges.
The challenge, or ask it makes, is to find things to appreciate, even when it can keep you at an arm’s length. Because I have brought this album with me, through time, as I can. And there are songs to it that resonate deeper than others. The challenge comes in thinking analytically and acknowledging small moments that, even though there is less of a connection or affection, are still impressive to hear.
And it is difficult to sit with an album you know so well, or have known, and give it analytical, and critical, consideration. The risk, I think, is that you have less fondness, or affection, for it, because you have listened in a way that is not as forgiving.
I don’t think I ever considered Phantom Moon to be a perfect album. I think I always knew, even upon my initial listens as a teenager, that there were flaws. I think that, 25 years later, I am just able to articulate it now. The record does ask for your patience, and yes, there are times when it is easier to grant that. When the theatricality of the narratives works, it does really work. But when it doesn’t, or there is some kind of barrier that prevents you from connecting with the song, it doesn’t land as well as it does elsewhere.
The album opens with a short prelude, which then returns as the final track—an epilogue of sorts after the mournful wanderings of the penultimate song. The prelude effortlessly, and remarkably, slides into the moody, tender “Longing Town”—the closest thing here to a “folk song,” or perhaps the most akin to the introspective nature of Nick Drake and Pink Moon, though here, there is robustness as Sheik pulls back the tension with a rich, warm string accompaniment and vocals that soar.
The challenge comes in thinking analytically and acknowledging small moments—the jaunty, shuffling “Time and Good Fortune,” which begins the second half of Phantom Moon, was never a song that I was drawn to, at any point, but I can appreciate this moment. This brief melody that arrives between the verse, and the chorus. A sweeping string arrangement. Sheik’s tender vocals. “No one around—my, don’t we love?,” he asks.
*
Duncan Sheik has not released an album in four years. And, I mean, he doesn’t have to, I don’t think. Unless he wants to. Before that, seven years had elapsed between records. Again, the latter part of his career, at times, of diminishing returns. Uneven, certainly. However, he has remained a figure in contemporary popular music that I still am compelled by., after all this time.
Duncan Sheik has not released an album in four years. The last record he released, in the fall of 2022, was called Claptrap. And years before I sat on the floor in my friend Alyssa’s living room, when I recognized his face, on screen, in the role of “Celebrity,” in Uptown Girls, when Alyssa and I were still relatively new friends, I found myself writing about Sheik, and about the toxic masculinity of his lyrics, about his continued desire, though hesitation to dabble in electronic textures, and about Claptrap.
I had told Alyssa I was working on this, and she told me all she thinks of when she thinks of Duncan Sheik is this specific episode of Girls.
It’s in the third episode of the second season, when the character of Marnie finds herself in an art installation piece assembled by a pretentious artist, Booth Jonathan. It’s a chamber she has to crawl into, built out of televisions that loop video clips of death and decay, all while “Barely Breathing” plays in the background.
There’s a video on the site Gothamist, where someone shows Sheik the context with which the song was licensed. Alyssa sent it to me at the time—it’s behind a paywall now, but from what I remember, he seemed to be a good sport about it. Or, as good of a sport as he can be about a song he has spent the better part of 30 years trying to distance himself from, as much as he is able to.
I think about this a lot now, when I do think about Duncan Sheik.
This much I have told you before. About the way I think of seasons. How time passes. And how when you give consideration to the music you listen to, you associate certain artists, or songs, or albums, with specific times of year. With seasons. Time passing. The environment around you slowly changing.
This much I have told you before, and if you are like me, there are these specific moments, or times, that you return to. That you hold close, for whatever reason. The impact they might have had. The way you can still feel them rippling within you.
And for the connection I do have with time, and how it passes, and the music we associate, what I do not have an understanding of, or a way to best articulate, is the why. Why are there things that we are able to bring with us through time—from the point we discover them, until this moment, and beyond. Why do some albums, or artists, grow alongside us. And why are there ones that we can hold dear, that we do inevitably grow out of, and must leave behind.
*
If you look at something for too long, or look too closely, yes you will, perhaps, notice details you had previously not, which can be a good and a bad thing because you might find the places where the something in question is imperfect. Where there are flaws.
Phantom Moon, in the way it works with, and through its conceit, is not an album that buckles under the weight of its own ambition. It does, however, get lost itself sometimes. Hung up, or stuck, this kind of pageantry that I think is synonymous with the built-in theatricality. It can get lost within itself when it becomes, for a moment, rather bombastic, in the enormous, dizzying “Mouth on Fire.” And it also gets a little stuck, or caught up on itself, in a small, precocious way, in the penultimate track, “Requiescat.”
I think there’s a kind of emotionally tumultuous nature that a majority of Phantom Moon exists within—at times, more tumultuous than others. And this nature is what causes it to, lyrically, often depict regret, and in its arranging, appear mournful. There is a sorrow depicted. A finality. A longing, yes, that unfolds, and tumbles delicately on “Requiescat.” A little bluesy in how it meanders, and in the instrumentation used, as it finds its way into the remorse it underscores.
It’s Sheik who provides much of the song’s instrumentation—credited with the acoustic guitar, but also the low wheezing drone of the harmonium, which undulates throughout, while Gerry Leonard, again, plays the dobro, his dexterous work weaving punctuative notes in between the foundation Sheik has provided.
And what I mean, when I say that “Requiescat” gets a little stuck on itself, or lost in itself, is with how it explores language, relying, I realize now, too heavily on the way Sater’s words tumble in a precise rhythm with precise emphasis, from Sheik’s mouth. There’s a sense of loss that you can feel, sure. But it is the organization of the words themselves, almost entirely too self-aware and pleased with the cloying nature with which they’re arriving, that struck me this time, in listening analytically.
“Requiescat” is another song, too, that I noted begins mid-conversation, or mid-thought, in its opening line. “And there was gone, and there was Evermore,” Sheik begins. “And there was wherefore hast thou, and what heretofore. But not forevermore,” he continues. “Not evermore, now.”
The chorus, or what serves as the chorus, is a little easier to follow, or not get as caught up in. “Oh, Lord,” Sheik resigns. “Went away. Oh, Lord, wellaway. Oh Lord, that ye may keep her warm—requiescat.”
There is one more song on Phantom Moon, that follows, after the strains of the harmonium cease when “Requiescat” comes to an end. But there is something so final about this song. Not the end of the album. But the end of something. The end of the story. This story that has loosely been told through these portraits. This narrative we have been asked to take part in with Sater and Sheik. A love interest, gone, and a protagonist with a heart full of sorrow. This kind of depiction is, really, nothing new when it comes to contemporary popular music. In the pageantry here, far less toxic, or unnerving, than in the hands of Sheik alone as lyricist, but is still present.
There is a feeling, though, created by “Requiescat” that allows it to transcend itself. It is beautiful. I mean, there are countless places across Phantom Moon that are breathtaking in how they come together sonically. But here, a short, final reflection. Spectral or skeletal in what holds it together. Haunting, really. The sense of loss, and the longing. A marvel how it is sustained in the extended, instrumental final moments after Sheik delivers the final chorus. Hypnotic really, how easy it is to, at least in this specific instance, immerse yourself. A soft, last exhalation, before the end.
*
And it feels like fragments. Moments. Quickly moving. Flashes of brilliance. Memories, I suppose. Experiences. A life. These pieces we are always trying to hold onto. And I have told you this much before. Of the slow fade of summer’s kiss and the warmth of the sun, mingling with the slight chill in the air. Of the brilliant fury of oranges and reds. The turning leaves and the instant they surrender, letting go of the branch that has held them through two seasons, tumbling and scattering in slow motion to the ground below. I have told you this much. Of the shorter days. Of changes to our surroundings and the pasts we romanticize. Melancholy. Something bittersweet. A warmth and an invitation.
And now the children play through these shorter days
I hesitate to say that “The Winds That Blow,” the sweeping, gorgeous fourth track on Phantom Moon, has always been a song that sounds, and feels, like autumn to me. I don’t think that at 17, when I was introduced to this album, attempting to find my way through it and connect with it, that I was able to make that kind of articulation. That is the kind of thing that only comes in time. The kind of nostalgia, or wistfulness, that is dangerous because you feel it for a moment that you are still very much in.
If you listen to the beginning of “The Winds That Blow,” you’ll understand what I mean—that it feels like fragments. Flashes of brilliance quickly moving. There are these huge, punctuative sweeps that come from the way the progression on the guitar and the piano circle around one another, before it recedes slightly when Sheik’s voice arrives, leading us into the narrative. In its structure, it isn’t a song that relies on a sense of tension and release but it does follow this give and take, I guess, in terms of when elements are introduced, and how much space they are given—a kind of deliberateness that does allow for these moments that simmer, or smolder with a real warmth and tenderness, and then swell with a dramatic, stirring grandeur, alternating between a kind of propulsive skittering, specifically when the brushed percussive elements arrive in the second verse, and then these both, enormous swaths with intricate orchestral accompaniment fluttering, and swooning, surrounding Sheik’s ascendant vocal delivery.
And how formative was it, really. The moments, or the periods of our lives. Autumns from the past that we have romanticized. The turning of the leaves amongst the trees on the campus of an incredibly small liberal arts school in a midwestern city. The final gasp of summer as the warm September days concede to the cool breeze of October. The sun setting earlier and earlier.
The fragments we hang onto. Moments. Memories. People—often people we have fallen out of touch with, for whatever reason. There was a closeness, though, for a time. These times when we perhaps felt infinite.
There is an intersection, here. There is for me, at least. Perhaps for you, as well. If this song sounds, and feels, like autumn for you. This longing, and the acknowledgment of time passing, that are in the lyrics—dressed up in the theatricality of Sater’s writing, these sentiments resonate, and you find faint reflections of yourself in these flashes of brilliance. In the skittering propulsion and in the enormous swells of wind and string instruments, weaving dizzying, organic textures.
And it isn’t funny. Not really. Worth noting, I think. Because for as autumnal as I have made this album, and “The Winds That Blow,” specifically, the season itself is not mentioned by name. Implied, briefly, yes. But it is winter, and summer, that find themselves referenced in the way the song depicts the passing of time, and the yearning that fills in the space between two points.
Sater’s lyrics here are, of course, dramatic. Not as fantastical, or overtly whimsical, as he can be elsewhere on Phantom Moon, but there is still this sense of something wondrous unfolding in the narrative, and how it is directed. “All the shadows blue in the winter moon,” Sheik begins, quietly. “Stars within the darkness. They remember you, and they sorrow, too, with all the winds that blow.”
There is an evocative portrait that begins to take shape in the second verse through a simple turn of phrase, as well as a line that is returned to throughout. “Every book you’d read in the evening breeze,” he muses, followed by “Stars shown in the darkness.” Then, in the following verse, the idea of this kind of haunted longing is introduced, as the music begins to swell, and there is more expression in the way Sheik reaches down to deliver the vocals. “See the window too, that once you looked through—out on the stars, the darkness. It remembers you in this empty room, with all the winds so cold.”
Sheik reflects more on this—on time, and connection, and a past that cannot let go of us completely, after the shuffling, crisp percussion comes in underneath him, giving the song a steadier rhythm as it tumbles ahead. “And that phantom moon is a window too,” he explains. “Stars look through the darkness to some summer moon, where our ghosts still move, among the winds that blow.”
And it is a little overwrought, yes. But it is poetic. Dramatic. There is the literacy in Sater’s writing, as the song continues. “Were my soul and my silence. Were my hope, my lightness. Were the sword at my side through the winds that blow.”
I am remiss to describe “The Winds That Blow” as unrelenting, because that implies an intensity it simply does not have. But, it is a song that never ceases—pushing itself forward, and gliding, across a spry runtime, quickly pulling together these vivid portraits and spending just enough time with them before they are taken within the wind, which is a fascinating way, and a truly effective way, to work with the ideas of entropy, and time, within the confines of a song, and really conveying these feelings. The loss or longing. And this momentum you cannot outrun.
“And now the children play through these shorter days,” Sheik observes near the end of the song. “Til the stars show through the darkness. Now the young men stray, and nobody waves among the winds that blow.”
“They’ll remember you,” he proclaims again, right before the dazzling conclusion. “They will sorrow, too, and all the winds will blow.”
They’ll remember you. We have these moments. Fragments. We shuffle through them. The autumns from our past. How formative were they, though. Really. The people we used to know. The turning of the leaves amongst trees in a midwestern town set along the Mississippi River. The fade of summer’s kiss in September, bowing to the cool breezes of October and November. Early sunsets. They’ll remember you. They will sorrow, too. These times when we felt infinite, and the way these memories scatter, then. Like when the wind picks up, and strips the tree branches bare. Leaves tumbling to the ground in slow motion.
*
There’s this quote from Hanif Abdurraqib that comes to mind when I revisit something from my past. “Nostalgia is a relentless hustler—relies on how bad anyone wants to retrieve a feeling, or even the idea of a feeling.”
Duncan Sheik is not one to indulge in, or embrace, nostalgia.
His long-gestating and politically themed fifth full-length, White Limousine, is now 20 years old—released during the long, unforgiving winter of January 2006. His self-titled debut, most recently revisited through the Record Store Day vinyl reissue from 2024, turned 30 this spring.
Phantom Moon is in the middle. 25. And save for a short, animated video I found on the Nonesuch Records Facebook page, mentioning that the album was celebrating this milestone, it has otherwise, like these other anniversaries for Sheik, gone unacknowledged.
Nostalgia is a relentless hustler. We are, whether we wish to admit it or not, often grasping towards a feeling we wish to retrieve.
And there is a danger, of course, in revisiting something. Not even revisiting, really. But in giving consideration in a way you had not previously. That the faults will show. Maybe you’ll see them for the first time or have to acknowledge them in a way you hadn’t. You’ll understand that time is not kind to everything, and that some things we do hold dear and have held dear and we have for whatever reason carried with us through time, allowing them to grow with us rather than a growing out of—it is not best to leave those things as a part of the past but it does not always behoove us to look closer.
Appreciate it for what it was and what it is.
I suppose it is the same, then, for the pasts we romanticize. The autumns from lifetimes ago. People we once knew and once felt close that we no longer are and perhaps never really were. These moments. Fragments. They pass. Brilliant flashes.
In the haunting, meditative final track on Phantom Moon, “The Wilderness,” which serves as a reprise of the melody and an extension of the themes introduced in the album’s prelude, I think about this line that Sheik tenderly confesses.
“All we hold is only in the past.”
*
An Afterward—
And what I did not mention, is what the word “Requiescat” means—a prayer for the repose of a dead person. Requiescat in pace. Rest in peace. I wrote this over the summer of 2026, in anticipation for the embrace of autumn. Duncan Sheik died on September 17th, at the age of 56.
All we hold is only in the past.
