We are in a drawing room, although it’s a more ample, rock’n’roll version than your great-aunt’s. Persian rugs litter the wide stage floor, while vintage lampshades cast a halogen glow over Michael Kiwanuka and his 10-strong band.
The singer-songwriter might be playing ever-grander venues since he won the Mercury prize in 2020 with his third album, Kiwanuka, but the touring setup for his most recent outing, Small Changes (2024), is a study in warmth, ease and natural fibres: wooden chairs, a statement cardigan for Kiwanuka, a felt hat.
Tonight’s sound is not particularly parlour-intimate either. It doesn’t take long before Kiwanuka is cranking up the swinging soul of older tracks, such as the percussive, la-la-la-laden You Ain’t the Problem, or the more pointed Black Man in a White World. Both are bustling tunes in which this introspective artist tries to carve out a niche for himself in a complicated industry that rarely, before Kiwanuka came along, knew what to do with Black guitar troubadours. The night gets loud: his guitarist,Michael Jablonka, solos – sometimes crouching on the ground and sometimes, on the newer tracks, in the style of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. Three backing vocalists open their throats to the sky, and alongside two keyboard players a string section provides much shimmering depth of field.
But the prevailing atmosphere is one of soft landings and quiet generosity. “I’m pumped!” confesses Kiwanuka amiably, on playing this famous venue. “As pumped as I get,” he adds, apologetically.
Small Changes came within a tasselled hem of a No 1 spot on release last November. It was pipped to the post by Kendrick Lamar’s impactful GNX, a very different record by a fellow 37-year-old Black male artist, one that wrestled with parallel themes of identity and purpose, community and legacy, just in a very different idiom, almost like two sides of the same coin: hard-hitting hip-hop yang and smoky, mournful, songwriterly yin.
In fact, the more acclaim that has accrued around this calm, north London-born artist of Ugandan descent, the more he has decided to pare back his sound. From the title on in, Small Changes foregrounds unassuming qualities and dials down the showier orchestral psychedelia of Kiwanuka’s previous outings. From an admittedly low-key base, his grooves have only grown more gossamer – so much so, the better-known tracks that cluster near the end of the set – the TV sync Cold Little Heart; his first-album hit, Home Again – seem a little brash and route one compared to the more sophisticated, just-enough stylings of many of tonight’s arrangements. His touch is lightening.
Off the new album, Floating Parade is at once humid and bright, with an interplay between bassline and synths that recalls Air’s Moon Safari. Strings swirl elegantly, but this track isn’t polite supper-club fare; Kiwanuka is, as ever, talking about overcoming challenges without being brutalised by them. “We can be stronger than life itself,” he counsels tenderly. “We don’t belong in this hard luck hand we’re dealt.”
Played back-to-back, One and Only and Stay By My Side are recent love songs that underline the album’s theme of thoughtful constancy, with just as careful band dynamics to the fore. The piano outro to the former hangs in the air, while the latter warms up slowly, the backing vocalists coming in with a sudden wordless hovering.
Accompanying the songs tonight are lyrical visual essays: a baby’s face in closeup, with the camera slowly panning out; families at play; lovers gazing into each other’s eyes; hands holding children or caressing others. Although family has featured in Kiwanuka’s previous work – witness songs such as Father’s Child off 2016’s Love and Hate LP – he’s had two children of his own between Kiwanuka and now: just one of the bigger changes the album comes to grips with. The tour’s visuals feel like an intentional ode to the Black family, to tenderness, touch, love and fun playing out across generations, to the sustaining warmth of close relationships.
Perhaps the night’s most lyrical passage occurs during Lowdown, a two-part piece that channels the Beta Band and, after a fashion, the Rolling Stones. It finds Kiwanuka pairing a gloriously comforting piece of music, all loping ease and wheezing organ, with a troubled lyric that once again places him as an outsider.
He takes a step back on Lowdown (part ii), where Jablonka cuts loose aerated guitar lines. On the backdrop is a teenage boy pulling wheelies on a bike in the dark, the coda to the track’s video. Kiwanuka isn’t singing or playing here, but his intention is clear – to relay the feeling of liberty, absorbed but carefree.
Source: theguardian.com
