It’s an especially heroic lineage – the one that views Jekyll and Hyde rather than Lennon and McCartney as the most inspiring double-act in pop history – so when, after years of unacknowledged slog at the coal-face, Peter Wilson unveiled his Duke Special alter-ego, not only was he freeing up aspects of his personality that indie-dom could never hope to accommodate, he was also claiming kinship with the kind of acts who devote as much imagination dividing themselves like Russian dolls, as they do dreaming up killer choruses and hooks.
It’s a move that both commercially and creatively has paid out impressive dividends. Wilson’s gift for old school balladry was evident back in his Booley days, but the pantomime eccentricities of the Duke Special project saw him flourish in unexpected ways.
On record (meaning the mini-LP Adventures In Gramophone and his debut album proper, Songs From The Deep Forest) this liberation has resulted in a strange kind of gin-soaked Victoriana, with loveliness and disquiet mixing in equal measure. Live, it’s proven even more profitable - placing him in a unique position in Irish music: somewhere around the mid-point between P.T. Barnum and Randy Newman. There are few other performers, after all, who you can imagine being invited to collaborate with the Ulster Orchestra, and also write the theme tune to a Northern Irish version of Sesame Street.
The press release that accompanies I Never Thought This Day Would Come is keen to trumpet the record’s racheting up of the other worldly quota. It claims that “Duke Special is the fucked up ringmaster of a broken down circus, the lead singer in a forgotten ballroom of ghosts, the loudest singer in a midnight choir and the first on his knees in an old time revival tent.”
And, sure enough, throughout the record there are plentiful examples of him pushing his stage(y) persona as far as it will go.
On the Kurt Weill pastiche, ‘Digging An Early Grave’, for example, the woozy piano and cackled laughter conjure up the course of a fairground ghost-train; ‘By The Skin Of My Teeth’ veers terrifyingly close to cutesy Annie territory; ‘Flesh And Blood Dance’ is so cloyingly theatrical you half expect Graham Norton and Andrew Lloyd Webber to put it forward for a phone vote.
Maybe it’s because Tom Waits’ recent trip has burned off all the available oxygen from the neo-gothic, honky-tonk, West End circuit. Maybe it’s because to totally convince with that schtick, a performer needs to have about them a whiff of sulphur. But these moments – when we’re most conscious of the deployment of trapdoors and smoke bombs – are the most forgettable on I Never Thought...
Thankfully, rather than dominating proceedings, these hammy cameos are brief, and do little to detract from a record that, at heart (and despite what the PR blurb would lead you to believe) is less concerned with playing to the galleries, as it is connecting with the front-row.
Wilson, it’s becoming more and more obvious, is an even more interesting subject than his panda-eyed alter ego.
Mid-thirties, and with a young family, during previous interviews he has spoken of his struggle with an active and challenging faith – a consequence of which means he’s in the unique position of being as au fait with the Mission Praise songbook as he is with the back-catalogue of Harry Nilsson. And it’s during these off-stage moments – where realism and low-key romance (and not over-ripe melodrama) are the order of the day – that I Never Thought... soars.
Take the single ‘Sweet, Sweet Kisses’ – it’s a magnificent, gimmick-free, multi-coloured crowd pleaser; as is the giddy, Motown-flavoured ‘Let Me Go (Please, Please, Please)’.
Then we have ‘Those Proverbs We Made In The Winter Must End’, a deceptively simple song that becomes more mysterious and enigmatic with every listen.
Best of the lot is ‘If I Don’t Feel It’, which is delivered with such conviction, it sounds as if it’s as much an article of faith as it is a song.
By the end we’re left in no doubt which personality dominates this confident, big-hearted and ebullient record. And while Duke Special may be the name above the marquee, it’s Peter Wilson who deserves the standing ovation.
Key Track: ‘If I Don’t Feel It’