Duke Special - I Never Thought This Day Would Come

(Muso's Guide, May 9, 2009)

Album review

Despite plugging away at music industry success for the more than a decade, Duke Special brings his own peculiarly gentle pop ever-closer to mainstream success with I Never Thought This Day Would Come, his third long-form studio album.

So it’s an ‘A’ for effort and a ‘C’ for success… Until now.

Hailing from Northern Ireland, the Duke, also known as Peter Wilson, cuts a bizarre figure, with dreadlocks to his shoulders and thick black eyeliner. Certainly not the usual on the streets of his homeland.

I Never Thought This Day Would Come does plough a similar furrow to its predecessor, 2007’s Songs From The Deep Forest - tuneful and soulful, it boasts emotive language of romance and heartbreak, swathed in piano and imbued with a maturity beyond Wilson’s 29 years.

Opener ‘Mocking Bird Wish Me Luck’ is a delightfully smooth ballad on piano, saturated with the loss of a young love. “Right at the start of me/You stole a part of me”, the lyric goes, pleading for luck for the future, drenched with uncertainty and insecurity. As with all of his recorded output, Wilson’s gentle Co. Antrim vowels come over clearly in what amounts to heavily-accented singing, but far from irritating Snow Patrol-style, the result is a gentle lullaby of a vocal.

Single ‘Sweet Kisses’ is an early contender for single of the year, all bombastic rhythms and singalong chorus. The 1970s-style pomp is a radio-friendly touch, but the lyrics don’t waver from that ‘lost love’ angle Wilson does so well: “It was boom boom back when we were friends/Now the boo hoos tell me it’s the end” Wilson cites, in near-nonsense, but it’s pop, and it works. One of the happiest ever songs about heartbreak - behind, perhaps, The Avalanches’ ‘Since I Left You’.

The title track is another balladic number, coming off like a modern-day ‘Que Sera Sera’. “Stuck on a note/An old song I wrote/On a tape I cannot rewind”, goes Wilson’s simple poetry. Some of the tracks here miss the target slightly - ‘Flesh And Blood Dance’ is a music hall-swagger too far - but the lasting memory of singalongability and the very artistry of the words and music on show here reveal Wilson’s true talent for pop.

Success suddenly seems guaranteed.