Northern Ireland's Duke Special, real name Peter Wilson, doesn't look like he sounds.
Then again, I'm not too entirely what a cross between The Cure's Robert Smith and Australian comedian Tim Minchin should sound like. All I know is that punky dreadlocks and lashings of eye liner do not lead you to expect a set of melodic tunes and a smooth crooner's voice.
His appearance denotes an eccentricity which turns out to be manifest more in his choice of subject matter than in radical musical gestures.
The opening track,for example, - Stargazers Of The World Tonight - is described as a love song for astronomers and is about an occasion when he and a group of drinking chums shared their dreams on top of the Oh Yeah music centre building in Belfast.
Other topics include a banned Iranian children's book (Little Black Fish), a pirate who wants to retire (Twice Around The Island), a scene from John Steinbeck's East of Eden (Punch of A Friend), the Occupy movement (My Lazy Saviour) and reflections on what it means to be human (Condition).
If there is a connecting theme, a clue lies in the fact that the album title is taken from Willa Cather's 1913 novel about frontier life Oh Pioneers!
|
There are no songs about American history but plenty from the perspective of misfits and outsiders; people who, in the words of Lost Chord simply "want the world to make some sense".
In Condition, the contrasts between the singer's physical condition and state of mind give plenty of reasons why this can be so difficult and why confusion often prevails: "I am sane - I'm half demented..............I am sober, I am wrecked .........I'm a pin drop, I'm Phil Spector"
These unconventional songs are well crafted but the orchestral arrangements and bland vocal delivery are disappointingly mainstream.
How I Learned To Love The Sun and Always Been illustrate why his official profile makes much of his "vaudeville-esque sensibility" and "bruised romanticism" but without humour or poetry he doesn't succeed in taking the vague sense of longing to a deeper level.
Duke Special's website
|
