Danny & the Champions of the World Tickets

There’s something to be said for hitting the ground running, with a good tailwind behind you. Danny Wilson agrees. And his new album is the proof. Wilson and his band, Danny & The Champions, spent much of 2014 on the road, playing shows all over the world, the kind of legendary, life-affirming rock and soul revues (with country fringing) that have seduced them a global following, and which they finally committed to wax on last year’s glorious concert double-album, Live Champs! When their touring schedule drew to a close at the end of the year, you might have thought Wilson and his Champs would hunker down on the sofa for a few weeks, get some much needed R’n’R. But that’s not how Champions roll.

The momentum they’d accrued on the road carried them through, though, and the music they cut during those two weeks, What Kind of Love, is some of Wilson’s very best. There’s a glint in his eye as he talks about the vibe within the Champs camp right now. The songs contained therein started life on the road, at soundcheck or back at the hotel after the show, and saw Danny writing many songs with his bandmate Paul Lush instead of penning tunes on his lonesome, as is his usual MO. The songs are rich, joyful and moving, opener Clear Water another Wilson classic-in-the-making, with its tale of finding yourself far from the ones you love but still feeling the strength they give (“When life gets crazy / I see you”, runs the hook).

The theme running through What Kind of Love concerns that most multi-faceted four-letter-word: love, in all its many different permutations. The album takes its title from a song Wilson and Lush penned with friend Joe Kinsey, of the band Billy Vincent. Wilson and Kinsey go way back; Danny’s mum taught Joe at nursery school, and the pair share South London roots. Danny reconnected with Kinsey after bumping into him in the studio, and they bonded over this remarkable, sweltering slow-burner, which Wilson describes as “Southern-soul. South London soul. Sutton soul.” Wilson knows he can risk a cheesy album title, because there’s not a morsel of fromage across What Kind Of Love’s ten tracks, just songs written and sung from the heart, in a tenor that will feed the soul.