It’s been since 7 years since Michael Kiwanuka told us a tale about the ways a song can pull us into stirring, unfurling futures with a sound we’d somehow always felt yet never heard, and 3 since his undeniable banger of a follow-up. Now he returns with KIWANUKA, and my cage continues to rattle with this work.
The first single, “You Ain’t the Problem,” finds him severing from a self-effacing voice we, again, somehow felt yet never heard, while this tune drifts more subtly on the surface before cutting even deeper into those feelings when it comes to love. “You’ve taken me from my enemies,” he refrains before letting the chorus go. “I still let the pressure get to me.”
Kiwanuka writes melodies to the struggles we all know won’t disappear like dust, and yet he keeps finding new ways to tell that tale, to seek love in a lament and to conjure a bravely beautiful chorus amid any sort of chaos.
Get the new record here.