Duke Special – Aldershot West End Centre, 5June 2008.

Duke Special returned to the Westy to round off a solo tour in style. Having played the venue last year with a full band as the first date of a tour, it was fitting he went full circle and finished this tour in Aldershot. Having gained huge critical acclaim for his album ‘Songs From The Deep Forest’, Duke Special (real name Peter Wilson) decided to try something different this time around.

But first up was support The Voluntary Butler Scheme. The name may conjure up visions of a mass of people crowded on stage but one man, Rob Jones, appeared and went on to captivate the entire audience for his half hour set. Incorporating loops, samples, keyboards, drums and the occasional guitar solo TVBS had a vocal style not dissimilar to Badly Drawn Boy and was bursting full of ideas The Beta Band never got round to using.

With a dry sense of humour prevalent throughout, both in songs (one was called ‘Tabasco Sole’) and during the banter, it was clear this is fun music made to make people smile. The Pet Shop Boys-referencing, kazoo-led ‘The Eiffel Tower The BT Tower’ deserves to be a huge hit – a fine piece of summertime pop. Getting Duke Special to help out on one of his songs fitted perfectly with their voices complimenting each other well. Having only one single left to sell and clearly more people wanting to buy it, it was clear there was only one way to see who would go home happy – a raffle to be drawn in the headline set.

With a military drum raised on stage and visuals projected onto it, Duke Special came on to rapturous applause and sat at his grand piano to captivate the audience for an hour and 45 minutes. Haunting vocals and sublime playing had the crowd in silence for almost the whole gig. Although with many lyrics about getting drunk, it’s clear he’s not a miserabilist. This was shown when during the early part of the set he stood up, talked into his gramophone-style mike and started handing out lyric sheets to the crowd (“One between two”). With lyrics to five songs in the set printed in there, he led the crowd into communal singalongs – some split between boys and girls, some were led by Duke Special and others put the crowd on backing vocals. It worked perfectly, with every single person getting into it and sounding surprisingly good and coherent.

Hailing from Northern Ireland and softly spoken, it became clear that Duke Special was enjoying himself on stage and the freedom of playing solo. He could stop for chats with the crowd, he only had himself to blame for cock-ups and he seemed to know he had the crowd enthralled by his playing. When he asked the audience to sit down for two highly emotional songs, they did with no exceptions. Playing his biggest hits ‘Freewheel’ and ‘Last Night I Nearly Died’ using an antique record player to replace the lack of band even worked. Two encores later, he ended the set singing in the middle of the crowd while banging cymbals together. A truly special gig.