FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
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WHEN I do this feature…
I do not normally feature an album that is so recent. The reason I want to include Michael Kiwanuka’s KIWANUKA is because the Mercury Prize nominations are coming later this month – and Kiwanuka’s semi-eponymous third studio album must be one of the frontrunners! Released in November last year, I would urge people to buy KIWANUKA on vinyl, as it sounds incredible! I also think KIWANUKA is one of the best albums of recent times, and it is his finest work. I loved his debut, Home Again, and he took another big leap on his sophomore album of 2016, Love & Hate. Whilst the transition from the debut to second album was more to do with confidence and a shift from ‘70s Soul to a more original and personal sound, I am not sure what it is that makes KIWANUKA so good. I think Michael Kiwanuka took another massive step, and the songwriting is phenomenal. Kiwanuka manages to mix bigger sounds with more intimate moments, and everything on KIWANUKA is so powerful and urgent. Michael Kiwanuka is only thirty-three, but he seems to emanate the wisdom and experience of someone much older. Truly, on his third album, he has hit a peak that many of his peers can only dream of! At fourteen tracks and a running time of just under an hour, there is that mixture of a great selection of songs, but the album does not last too long, so you are both satisfied and left wanting more.
In terms of the best tracks, it is hard to pick just one! I love You Ain't the Problem, and Piano Joint (This Kind of Love), but there are so many great selections! It is an album where a promising artist rises to the status of legend. I think KIWANUKA is an album that a lot of upcoming artists will look at and want to emulate. I want to bring in a few sections of an interview Kiwanuka gave to NME last year where, among other things, he discussed a growth in confidence, and defying stereotypes imposed on black artists:
“It’s no accident that Michael Kiwanuka’s most assured album is self-titled, he explains: “A lot of this record is about how you get to an age where you feel confident in yourself and comfortable in your own skin. You’re not trying as hard to be accepted. The songs were feeling a bit more boisterous than the ones on my previous albums. I thought, ‘What’s a bold way to describe this album?’”
With ‘KIWANUKA’, though, “the penny dropped… With ‘Love & Hate’ and ‘Home Again’ [his second album, released in 2016], I always had that imposter syndrome that someone was gonna figure me out. In the process of making this album, I got so tired of that way of thinking. I thought: ‘I’ve really got to nip that in the bud.’ You miss the best thing ever because you’re not present – you’re over-thinking.”
“I’m a black man and the music I make isn’t necessarily specific to who I could be typecast as,” he says. “I was into guitar and rock’n’roll music, as well as soul, jazz and ‘70s music. People were like, ‘Your music taste is crazy!’ People thought I was this crazy weird black guy from Muswell Hill that plays guitar. They assumed I was this rich kid and that I didn’t understand anything. I was always desperate to be a bit bland. I don’t know why you would want that… Maybe you just think you’re gonna have an easier life and no-one’s gonna mention things”.
It will be exciting to see where Michael Kiwanuka heads next, as his KIWANUKA album really hit critics hard! I would be shocked if it missed out on a Mercury nomination, as it is a work of brilliance. Before wrapping things up, I will bring in a couple of huge reviews that show how critics reacted to KIWANUKA when it arrived last November. This is what AllMusic wrote when they sat down to the listen to the album:
“Born to Ugandan parents who fled during Idi Amin's reign of terror and settled in Muswell Hill, Kiwanuka has had to fight to keep his identity at the forefront of the culture; numerous record execs tried to get him to dump his birth name for one easier to market, resulting in such a crisis of self-confidence that he shelved an earlier album called Night Songs, recorded as the initial follow-up to Home Again, so he could decide if he even wanted to continue pursuing a musical vocation. This third album wears its self-titling as a badge of honor, a statement of who Michael Kiwanuka as artist and individual is. Once more produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, this 13-song set is a brave, colorful collection that provides an exceptionally well-rounded aural portrait of Kiwanuka's massive and diverse talent.
If one had to choose a genre umbrella for this release, the term "21st century psychedelic soul" would fit better than anything else. The opening tune here, "You Ain't the Problem," carries the inspiration of Curtis Mayfield in its rave-up chorus, while "Rolling" melds sweeping soul and the reverbed guitar psychedelia of Arthur Lee and Love. "Hero," at least initially, is a haunted, acoustically driven folk ballad: "I won't change my name/No matter what they call me." It transforms from a first-person manifesto into a trippy yet direct folk-rock homage to Fred Hampton, late president of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, who was gunned down by city police as he slept. "This Kind of Love" is perhaps the first tune to ever meld Bill Withers' folksy, funky soul to Terry Callier's singular, jazzed-up take on the genre. "Hard to Say Goodbye" is a weave of exotica-tinged, pillowy strings; Pink Floyd-esque guitar and effects atmospherics; and the sophisticated soul of Stevie Wonder circa Talking Book. Lyrically, the album reveals Kiwanuka at his most vulnerable and strident (no mean feat). The dramatic nature of his songwriting is gifted to listeners in catchy earworms, adventurous textural interludes, provocative lyrics, and through an ambitious melodic palette. As fine as Love & Hate was -- worthy of all its accolades -- Kiwanuka stands head and shoulders above it as a complex, communicative, poetic, and somet”.
To me, KIWANUKA is an album one absorbs themselves in, like the young artist wants people to return to past times when albums were enjoyed in a single sitting – hence why I wanted to put KIWANUKA into Vinyl Corner! Indeed, one gets a very different experience listening to the album in full, rather than picking a few tracks or skipping through the album. This is something The Guardian commented on in their review of KIWANUKA:
“Unusually, in these streaming-led times, Kiwanuka is a contemplative song cycle intended to be listened to in one extended sitting, which he says is “a reaction against this fast-paced, throwaway, machine-led world”. It sounds timeless and contemporary; the instrumental interludes and the stylistic and tempo shifts all hang together because of his warm, sincere vocals and fantastic songwriting. At the core is Kiwanuka’s inner battle between anxiety, self-doubt, spirituality and wisdom, which is then set against racism and rueful glances at the state of the world. Thus, killer opener You Ain’t the Problem is both an encouraging nudge to himself and a sharp put-down of attitudes towards immigration: “If you don’t belong, you’re not the problem.”
Hero compares the murder of 60s activist Fred Hampton with recent US police shootings (“on the news again, I guess they killed another”), also referenced in the insistent Rolling (“No tears for the young, a bullet if you’re wrong”). Piano Joint (This Kind of Love) and Hard to Say Goodbye are beautifully pensive and Final Days ponders nuclear apocalypse. But for all its melancholy, Kiwanuka is never downbeat. There are moments – such as the “Time is the healer” gospel choir in I’ve Been Dazed, or hopeful closer Light – when positivity bursts through with such dazzling effect you want to cheer. Kiwanuka is a bold, expansive, heartfelt, sublime album. He’s snuck in at the final whistle, but surely this is among the decade’s best”.
If you can grab a copy of KIWANUKA on vinyl then do so - or go and stream the album and spend some time listening to it. It is a sensational record, and one that I have been returning to and being uplifted by. Not only is KIWANUKA a big leap and evolution in terms of Michael Kiwanuka’s career…I think it is also…
ONE of the best of the 2010s.