Duke Special, Sandinos Bar

It's almost 11 pm on a weekday summer night upstairs at Derry-Londonderry's Sandinos bar, and there is faint chattering amongst a seemingly rather optimistic and quietly excitable group of Duke Special fans awaiting their hero's return to the city, as part of his Look Out Machines tour.

Known best for his sly, stylish and vaudevillian crafting of famous and not-so-famous melodies into a uniquely winning intellectual, emotional and musical cocktail, the dread-locked Belfast native otherwise known as Peter Wilson will only need himself, a chair, a keyboard and a (sort of) starry backdrop to give us a two-hour anthology to remember.

Yes, I said "anthology". With no support act either before him or beside him, and with an audience that could be described as disappointingly modest at best - a cry of "Where is everybody?" is heard before the gig even begins, and I'd be inclined to agree with it - Wilson will let his music and his music alone, over thirty songs, to be more precise, speak for him.

And they do so, better than any flash, bang or pyrotechnics ever could.

Ten seconds in and already he achieves a classically poetic, regretful poignancy with Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 36. Appreciation is immediately felt for the slightly unkempt but no less amiable Wilson, who tells us to expect a mixture of the "old, new and experimental". He's right there.

Anniversary Song maintains the melancholic determination but adds a jaunty, jazzy slant - has any Northern Irish performer, Neil Hannon excluded, merged conflicting musical and lyrical emotions so effectively? - before Wilson whoops his way through Ghost Riders In The Sky. It's like Quentin Tarantino meets good old-fashioned storytelling, bizarre yet brilliant.

A brief and pleasant foray into Harry Nilsson is stopped in its tracks by an almost heartbreaking original song - The Poet's Mission. This is Wilson at his most topical, his gaze and vocals indicating an arts community hampered by lack of monetary support but embraced by togetherness and unity.

Sweet Violets sees Wilson dabble heavily in the smart and blackly comedic, as he sings lyrics that cut off predictable rhyming for something regularly, wittily amusing. Its "on your toes" nature is the arguable epitome of a set list that takes an unexpected and unpredictable detour in between almost every number. Who, for example, could possibly have envisaged that the night would conclude around 1am with a cover of Video Killed The Radio Star?

Or that Condition, from O Pioneer, would be performed so delicately and so relatably? As a song that speaks to both the artist and ourselves about where he is at that moment in time, where he needs to be, and how he needs to perform if he is to continue thriving, it's an enthralling listen.

Were every song that intense, though, the night would be worse for it, and fortunately there are more than enough requisite sing-a-longs or Duke Special "hits" to break the ice and liven the atmosphere.

The first familiar intro, that of Brixton Leaves, immediately elicits appealing applause. Later, we will be asked to chant along to the chorus of the Creaky Boat Blues, and then enjoy a rendition of Portrait sung not by Wilson, but rather, a guy from the audience who knows it almost as well. Throw in an expectedly professional Last Night I Nearly Died, and an especially poignant Freewheel, among other quality tunes, and you have an intimate, low-key event that impresses on many levels.

Decidedly raw and un-populist, almost unprecedentedly so, this event deserved a larger audience – one that we hope Duke Special will certainly receive when he returns to the city's Nerve Centre in September to perform with Uliad.

Simon Fallaha

Duke Special performed at Derry-Londonderry's Sandinos Bar, as part of his Look Out Machines tour, on Thursday, 11 August.