Michael Kiwanuka

Kiwanuka

This is an exceptionally compelling, absorbing, rich, and genuinely human piece of work.

As well as being his most reflective album, it’s also Kiwanuka’s most hopeful.

The soulful singer’s third LP is timeless and contemporary at the same time, with shades of everything from What’s Going On to Screamadelica.

Kiwanuka is therapeutic for all parties involved. It's honest, psychedelic, enlightening and recalls blackness defined by acoustic folk and the organic soul of past artists like Gil Scott-Heron, Bobby Womack and Otis Redding.

Blending a range of influences, sounds and themes to ensure a creative and compelling end result, this is one of the very finest recent R&B records, blending the personal, political, and pure to dazzling effect.

Kiwanuka is loaded with memorable songs, but the best way to experience them is by listening to the album from start to finish.

You will be inspired by his respectful, authentic and memorable nod to his old soul idols (from Gil Scott-Heron to Bobby Womack) but most importantly you are likely to be inspired to follow his new found courage on self-belief.

KIWANUKA doesn’t waste a single one of its 51 minutes, and seems destined to receive the same sort of acclaim as its predecessor.

Michael Kiwanuka has undoubtedly created a timeless album, one made with impressive confidence.

KIWANUKA is a breathtaking retro-futuristic hybrid of funk, soul, rock and folk that somehow exists in all of the past 50 years at once. It’s a tumultuous record, at once confessional and restive, and shot through with a quiet anguish.

Packed with vibrating soul and lush textures, it’s a recipe everyone will be looking to copy but no-one will be able to master like the man himself.

This isn’t as immediately powerful or riveting as Love & Hate. But the multifaceted material, along with the pioneering, organic and often offbeat production, grows on you.

The record is an introspective mix of psychey soul, blues, rock and funk, which skips and strolls and swaggers through its 13 tracks – but it is not simply an exercise in nostalgia.

As fine as Love & Hate was -- worthy of all its accolades -- Kiwanuka stands head and shoulders above it as a complex, communicative, poetic, and sometimes even profound collection that wears its heart on its sleeve and its sophistication in its grooves.