Danny Wilson
Complete
CHERRY RED
Scotland’s Danny Wilson—smoothly singing, jagged lyricizing, and cinematically cosmopolitan chord-bending composer Gary Clark with brother Kit Clark and Gerard Grimes—made the most ornate and sophisticatedly arranged debut with 1987’s Meet Danny Wilson. Named for a Frank Sinatra dramedy where jealousy and spite rule the title character’s romantic narrative and warmly crooned songs, Danny Wilson was but one of post–new wave UK’s clever, cultured-pearl ensembles alongside Prefab Sprout, Swing Out Sister, and The Blue Nile.
Each of these artists had a jazzy, breezy feel and wry Bachrachian melodic sensibilities, but what made Danny Wilson so impactful—on Meet Danny Wilson and, to a lesser degree, on their second sturdy album, 1989’s Bebop Moptop—was how grand and how caustic Clark could be beyond his competitors when it came to big, smart songs with big, smart snark attached to them. Each track the trio recorded in their all-too-short time together sounded like it could be Richard Harris’ second choice for a song if Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park” didn’t work out (and perhaps bringing Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy along for the ride).
Cherry Red is releasing Complete as a five-CD box set, with both full-lengths, a wealth of B-sides, rare remixes, and a full disc of recordings of a raw yet supple live show from London’s Town and Country Club in 1990. Along with savoring the delicate beauty of their lone hit single “Mary’s Prayer” and its B-side “Monkey’s Shiny Day,” tunes such as the tower-bell-bonging “Davy” and the mixed-bag jazz—respectively loud and soft—of “Aberdeen” and “A Girl I Used to Know” are better, catchier, and stronger than when you first heard them. The live disc, recorded not long before the trio broke up, features a juicy version of Meet’s dreamy “Steamtrains to the Milky Way” and an even wetter take on ABBA’s “Knowing Me Knowing You.”
The only thing better than having Meet Danny Wilson re-framed (and more readily available physically in the present) would have been to include Clark’s doe-eyed solo album from 1993, Ten Short Songs About Love, into its mix, as it could easily pass for a third album from Scotland’s sophisti-pop finest. To quote Danny Wilson, however, nothing goes as planned.
