Duke Special - Eccentric Irish genius hits London!

May 13th 2015

London, Islington Asembly Hall, UK

Vaudeville style Folk engages you in London!

Duke Special ***1/2 This venue should have been the perfect fit for Duke Special (AKA Peter Wilson) with his musical theatre style music, sweetly lifted by his Lisburn, (Northern Ireland), accent. It is not the first time he has graced the Islington Assembly Hall with his whimsical brilliance. He last played there in 2013 in a one off London special.

On this particular night the magic was intermittent. For me this was partly down to the ambiance and set up at the venue, which translated into a colder, more distant performance than usual. The audience felt too far away from the stage. Duke Special remained a little bit static and was hidden behind his upright piano. The quirky factor was a bit lacking. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments of genus when Duke lifted himself out from behind the piano to beat out rhythms with drumsticks during ‘Son of the left Hand’. There were moments of comic warmth when he invited Paul Cook (his opening support) to sing on stage with him, and you could feel that he moved the audience when he played the satisfyingly strange ‘Turtle Soup’ by Ivor Cutler, and emotionally powerful ‘Wake up Scarlet’.

He has set the bar high for himself, which can make a critic seem harsh. It was a solid performance, with a few flaws. It was lacking that get me standing up in my seat sing along factor. It was a shame that the show started out with Duke competing to be heard above the rough and heavy bass instrumentals of his accompanying band. I was left wondering if Duke is actually at his best performing solo with a piano. The clarity and beauty of his vocals on the recording of his studio session from the Windmill Lane in Dublin, January 2015, provide a strong argument in a favour. His vocals deserve to sound pristine, and I found the band played with far too much reverb to work well with most of Dukes’ Boho music hall songs.

On the other hand maybe he just needed the volume turned up on the mic. The sound worked well for songs from the new album ‘Look out Machines’ and his darker material: 'Hand of Man' from his 2011 album 'Under the dark Cloth' and ‘Digging an early Grave’ from ‘I Never thought this day would Come’. These tracks were the highlight of the show. I noticed that his vocals improved, not only as he relaxed into the show after the first couple of tracks, but also after he got his mouth right up close to the microphone. To me this suggests something was not quite right in the balance of sound between him and the rest of the band.

A sprinkle of something a little more bizarre, more movement and syncopation with the band, would have made the difference between an amazing performance, rather then just an enjoyable, but mediocre one. The verdict is don’t judge the music by this performance alone. Every performer has off moments. I just love the new album, and with tracks like ‘Nail on the Head’ it deserves to climb higher in the UK charts.