Cool Hand Duke: Duke Special interview

Confirmation, if needed, that Tom Cruise-with-fighter-jets classic ‘80s flick Top Gun is not a major influence on the sound of Duke Special. “No,” says man behind the music, Peter Wilson. “But you can call me Goose.”
We’re discussing the opening song of his latest record, Look Out Machines!, which sets its immediate, synth-inflected tone very well indeed. To be more specific, we’re discussing its title, ‘Wingman’.
“That came about when I was touring the songs of Harry Nilsson last year,” explains the Belfast artist, bathed in the rare spring sunshine that streams into Dublin’s Library Bar. “I played in the Roisin Dubh and the drummer that was with me had just split up with someone. You know the way there’s a club afterwards? Well, I said I’d be his wingman. That’s where the title came from – though it’s more about friendship.”
Was Wilson much cop at helping his bandmate cop off?
“I was a terrible wingman, I scared people away!”
No good in the sidekick role himself, Wilson enlisted a number of musical wingmen to aid in the creation of the follow-up to 2012’s Oh Pioneer!.
“This is the first record I’ve done where I deliberately collaborated on every song... I deliberately threw myself into little writing sessions with people. Not in the Nashville sense, where I’m looking for someone else to write me a hit record. It was more people I’ve worked with before. Friends that play in the band with me. People I’ve always admired and wanted to write with. In the way a band would anyway, that in-built collaborative process that goes on. As a solo artist you don’t have that.”
The sessions gave him the framework that a title or overarching theme has given him on previous outings.
“With Oh Pioneer!, there was a concept. I had the title before I had any of the songs so I wrote to that remit. With this one, I intentionally said: ‘Right, I want these songs to be more direct. Allow them to be about anything.’”
Similarly, Look Out Machines!’s sonic aesthetic arrived by happenstance when Wilson teamed up with old pal Phil Wilkinson to write and demo.
“Just by the nature of the writing process, there were a lot of synthetic strings and synthetic drums. It had a bit of an ‘80s feel about it and I was thinking, ‘I love this!’ So I made the call, and asked him would he see it home with me.”
Other names called upon include Dave Izumi, Boo Hewerdine and Snow Patrol associate Iain Archer. Intriguingly, given the shared effort, Wilson’s fourth is one of his most personal efforts yet, with the lyrics often dropping the magical storytelling for a firsthand approach.
“Lyrically, I know what I want to say. For example, when I wrote ‘Elephant Graveyard’ with Iain, I’d been thinking a lot about elephant graveyards, weirdly! So I came with that idea, wrote loads and loads of lyrics and then we just started jamming together.”
Leaping from project to project, Wilson hasn’t reached a point of satisfaction as an artist. Thankfully. Does he still feel restless creatively?
“Always,” he nods. “You’ve such a limited time and there’s so much to explore. When you think of all the music and books that have ever been written, you’ll get the tip of the iceberg – if even! I’m still discovering seminal, iconic acts like Big Star!
“I remember hearing a song on the radio and I thought ‘that’s amazing!’ and covered it in Manchester on the stage where it had first been performed. Someone came up to me and said, ‘I really enjoyed it but you were very brave doing that. It was ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division! I hear afterwards it’s voted one of the top songs of all time. This might have been 10 years ago. But I was like, ‘Well, it’s new too me!’”
With a penchant for Ian Curtis and Harry Nilsson, does he buy into the cliché that a great artist has to be somewhat tortured?
“I used to believe that. I’m glad I don’t now. I want to keep doing this until I’m old. I remember reading something where PJ Harvey was saying that’s bollocks. Look at Tom Waits, who’s made the craziest stuff since he went dry. Leonard Cohen. The role of an artist is to be honest and that can be uncomfortable. Being fucked up is a misleading shortcut to that. Self-loathing and whatever, I think that’s a fake version."”
Possibly a side-effect of its direct approach, Look Out Machines! is a record with plenty of radio potential.
“On the radio at the moment, there’s a lot of homogenised music ticking boxes,” Wilson says. “If you can meet some of those requirements on your own terms, and it still has your fingerprints all over it, that’s great. But I’m certainly not going to try and be somebody else.”
Infiltrating the airwaves by stealth, then.
“Yes. That’s the way I’m always going to do it.”