Michael Kiwanuka – Small Changes
Michael Kiwanuka's fourth album, Small Changes, is a boundless effort that, while revelling in its musical referents stands tall, ceaselessly, beside them
Mercury Prize recipient Michael Kiwanuka, Sault’s resident maestro Inflo and the inimitable Danger Mouse reunite on Kiwanuka’s fourth album, Small Changes. The album angles to circumvent the temporal; a confident stride in classic songwriting and craftsmanship that gives way to yet another example of Kiwanuka and his collaborators upping their creative ante.
Unlike Kiwanuka, Small Changes gives pause to the tempo found on those punctuated moments of its predecessor – You Ain’t the Problem; Hero – for the amber glow of Sade on the title track and Rebel Soul. This is the case for Small Changes, comprehensively: we are allowed to recline into its runtime, carried along rather blissfully over its warm current.
Textures feel invariably sun-dappled, the lyrics sincere meditations of love (Kiwanuka has welcomed two sons since his last release), while string compositions are heightened to catch-your-breath inducing zeniths throughout, notably on Follow Your Dreams and Live For Your Love. It is, then, even more effective that his warmest effort to date lets the other shoe drop on the album’s closer Four Long Years: a forlorn, shoegaze-reminiscent heart-stopper.
Small Changes seems to reach the listener’s ear with its patina built-in. A boundless effort that, while revelling in its musical referents – Sade, Gaye, Withers – stands tall, ceaselessly, beside them.
Listen to: Small Changes, Rebel Soul, Live For Your Love