I am not a Kiwanuka fan. But let’s be clear, I’m not a hater either, far from it. I genuinely love some of his music. Some of his tracks are some of the most emotionally and socially impactful tracks of the past 10 years. I am specifically talking about Cold Little Heart and Black Man in a White World.
Despite this love for these Kiwanuka-Funadamental-Tracks, I’ve never loved his albums. They tick so many boxes for me. On paper, I should love them, but I have never engaged with any of his albums in the way that I expect or perhaps even want to. I think we’ve all heard this story with me and other artists haven’t. As Guy always says, you can’t manufacture the feels. Amen. You can’t. Loving music is not a mathematical equation. You cannot solve for the connection that you might instantly feel or develop over time and experience with music and how it fits in your life. So, I approach this album with a mix of trepidation but always with love.
I was not over the moon when it looked like this album was the one that worked best for the pod when it was my month to choose the album of the month. That emotion is not a great start when critiquing an album. However, my emotions took another nose dive when I discovered that this album is a collection of tracks recorded in the same period of time as his previous album. These tracks are 2 years old. Could they be the outtakes from the last album? I hoped not.
Kiwanuka’s absence from the spotlight has recently been explained by him sharing that he has suffered from a stroke at the age of 38 and is still recovering under medical care currently. The story is heart breaking as is perfectly captured in this Guardian article / interview. This album was planned to be released much closer to the release of his last studio album ‘Small Changes’. This perhaps explains the relationship with Fudge and Small Changes. My uncharitable fear that this was simply ‘Small Changes Outtakes’ feels less accurate and the more charitable view is that ‘Fudge’ is the companion record to ‘Small Changes’. Music recorded, at a similar time, with more or less the same band, in a different environment but importantly viewed through a different lens … i.e. Kiwanuka self-produced these tracks. Moving away from DangerMouse and Inflo production is a big thing both from a narrative and sonic perspective.
Listen to it the album here or here or here.
So what does this album sound like to a non-Kiwanuka fan? Please consider the following initial thoughts, an introduction. This is not a review it’s just some stuff:
Immediately, this all feels surprisingly loose. It’s like a walk taken with no particular destination in mind—not merely walking for the sake of it, but as a genuine means of expression. It is an expressive mooch! It’s raw and messy and rich and luscious all at the same time. For those who never quite vibed with the impeccably polished, sometimes clinical sound of previous albums, this shift could be a welcome change? The vocals are often distorted, carrying the grit of being recorded through a mic’d-up amp (?), while the overall vibe remains chill, melancholic, restrained, and perhaps even a little constrained. It does feel like there is something being held back or perhaps missing? This is just a feeling, not a fact.
My overall impression was that I felt very comfortable. Definitely not blown away. Many of the tracks felt like they lacked something, and I think that they felt a little sub-Kiwanuka-classic to a non-fan. On later listens they’ve already morphed and changed so I am sure by recording time I will have been on a journey.Some track by track thoughts from my VERY first listen. These are subject to and highly likely to change, so don’t get too reactive about any of them!
- Summer Clothes – such a great way to start an album. The sample of this musician talking about creative authenticity is perfect. It’s a lovely message and it says a lot about the album and how we should listen to it. The track itself is beautiful. It is everything you probably expected and wanted if you’re a fan? There’s a noticeable lack of percussion, which creates a swirling, meandering vibe to the track, the strings and the backing vocals enhance this perfectly. The strings are quite high in the mix which is an interesting choice underlining the ethereal qualities of the sound.
- California builds beautifully, what’s the raspy breathy sound low in the mix. I feel that this one will be a grower?
- Just another moment – acoustic chug, trademark strings, that tambourine’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, got to love a woodblock too. I am very comfortable with the meandering jam-like feel that exists once the vocals end: for me this could feel noodley but avoids this perfectly, not sure how. The backing vocals really help provide some ‘human-connection’ to the instrumental passage.
- Drowning in You – this feels the loosest, feels like a demo? The synth is a welcome surprise as is the piano that sounds like it was recorded in Euston station. Interesting use of strings and backing vocals. Is this the most luscious, richly orchestrated demo ever? Very pleasant melody, if not instantly memorable.
- Love in My Heart – this instantly feels like a kiwanuka classic. It feels massive before it even gets massive. You probably know where it’s going and when it’s going to get there as you listen. This predictability is not a bad thing. You feel like you’re in safe hands, like someone you know well is taking you on a familiar journey … without any shoes on. I’m enjoying the soundscape. The synths against the strings are a wonderful thing. My favourite balance of production so far. Ooooh that cello, hello.
- Across the sky – the looseness is back. Acoustic guitar driven track, strings and synths join in and expand on the initial simplicity
- Stars – this feels perfectly placed as a sonic change up. Lots of things are subtly different on this track. that electric guitar is a welcome time change A d the vocal sounds clean and crisp for the first time on the album. Male backing vocal feels like a switch up . I like the melodic and lyrical simplicity. The drums feel loose as fuck. I like this. This is my favourite track so far.
- You sent me flying – this feels a little like a filler track. The slide guitar is a pleasant addition to the sonic palette. There’s nothing inherently bad about thud track, for me it’s not adding anything to what I’ve heard before. It’s doing a similar thing in a less remarkable or interesting way.
- Move In My Direction – another acoustic plus vocal start. Strings join in mid point. More memorable and impactful melody but I’m feeling like it lacks what I was enjoying before. I am feeling like this part of the album has a bit of an energy or vibe leak?
- Steve’s Paradise – instrumental opening feels like a welcome change given the previous two tracks that for me add nothing but follow a very familiar pattern. The la la las are beautiful as is that organ. I really like this track. This is gorgeous. It’s got a very Pink Floyd feel to its expansiveness and it really shakes up the feel of the album in a good way. This track does make others feel formulaic.
- Sing – boom. This is what we want. Ok it’s the same formula but this is simply a superior song. Instant vintage. Tuned percussion, analogue synths, loose drums, swelling strings, a chord change that feels Ike a key change, floor toms, and a guitar solo. That’s my bingo card sorted, house! Gorgeous outro.
- Swings and Roundabouts – this is a tough ask, what’s a track gonna do to finish an album after Sing ….. This is actually a very pretty end to the album. And a ,ore interesting track than I expected. Acoustic guitar solo anyone. Ok I buy it. That’s a lovely way to end the album.
I am curious to understand what will repeated listens do for my appreciation of this album.
This is a wonderful write-up Joey, both for its proximity to your getting into the album and the depth it goes into. You’ve teed things up really nicely. I’m still in my ‘early relationship’ phase of the album so I’ll qualify my response with that too.
What’s the obvious difference between us at the outset is where we sit with Kiwanuka. I’ve been a big fan ever since I heard Home Again back in 2012. Back then, his music was a lot more acoustic, smaller in scale, the sound of an artist feeling his way, but already with a deft touch and personal lyrics that drew me in. To see where he is now fourteen years (!) on is a real testament to how he’s grown as an artist. He’s gone from BBC Introducing to headlining festivals. Every one of his albums has gone gold in the UK and been in the top 5 in the UK, with his breakout, Love and Hate, peaking at the top spot.
My own history with him is fairly straightforward: infatuation. I’ve loved everything he’s done, and brought both Love and Hate (in 2016, here) and Kiwanuka (in 2019, here) to the blog (pre-podcast days) as my albums of the month. I loved them both: for their soul, one foot in Marvin Gaye and Bill Withers’ territory and the other in the modern world, and for their soul-bearing feel, whether talking about love or wider society. I still listen to them, enjoying how far Kiwanuka’s come as an artist and person. From a shy middle-class kid to a man in touch with his roots and more sure of himself and that shining through. I’ve been lucky enough to see him live, and it’s a celestial experience. I’ve seen so few artists with so little ego, just performing the music they love with no artifice, and it can only make me love him more. So I approached Fudge with anticipation, waiting last year for it to surface.
We all know the reason now it was delayed. It hit me hard. Really hard. I think there’s something about the gentleness of his spirit, and the peaking of his career – only 4 albums in 14 years, but always worth the wait – that felt so unjust. I wrote about it in a recent Substack, perhaps feeling mortality more keenly with my age and my family in the picture, so I approached the record with some trepidation. The singles had been excellent: the breezy Summer Clothes , full of bright sound and intimate lyrics, Sing, with its sweeping movements, layered in sadness, a paean to the power of song, and the lovelorn California. I had high hopes, but also it felt like a shadow lay over the whole record. I was finding it hard to separate the album – which came long before his stroke – and the impact and emotional heft of that whole event.
I found myself hearing lyrics and tying them inextricably into the position he finds himself in: “Miracles, I need miracles, to wash away the pain, because….life is hard to live” in Sing cut my in half. It was a heartbreaking listen. “I need love, love, love to take me home, I’ve been gone, gone, gone for way too long” in California felt similarly unbearably poignant. Even now, as I’ve got to know the album as a whole, it has been hard to draw a line between the past and the present.
Getting into the album helped see it as a different narrative. Much has been made of his move to self-production in his own studio and away from the success of Dangermouse and Inflo, and the talk of long, whole-band sessions, and you can hear this running through the album like a character of itself. There’s a distinctly live feel to the whole thing, and songs trade long intros and outros, carrying on the vibe and energy beyond the acceptable-for-streaming length, but rather than worry at an album of an hour in length, I’ve marveled at its willingness to just be how it should be: to have the confidence – despite the prescient vocal at the start of Summer Clothes – to just be itself. Kiwanuka is a fantastic musician, and having the band that honed his albums on the road together seems to give it a vibrancy that takes the album to a different space.
It is long, but it never feels it. I found the first two listens flying by, and it’s always felt like a cohesive whole. I’ve loved the grandness of some of the longest tracks, Love In My Heart’s slow beginnings, opening like a delicate flower, into this orchestral, cinemascope track is a thing to marvel at. I know that my love for this may be seen opposite by those that struggle with the album’s length or track lengths, but it’s almost like Kiwanuka’s confidence, growing as he’s progressed through his career, has emerged to let his ideas run through to their full forms. And if that chimes with you, it may feel as epic as it does for me.
The album – save for the exceptional Just Another Moment (possibly one of his best ever records) – is relatively one-paced, but within that you get mantra-like Drowning In Your Heart, the piano and guitar washing over each other like waves, the classic soul of Love In Your Heart, the airy, slide-guitar and organ-riven Steve’s Paradise. There’s real richness in the melodies, Kiwanuka’s voice has never sounded more full of emotion, and strings and female vocals are deployed effectively and atmospherically – no more so than in Move In My Direction – showing his own songwriting and production skills are fully developed without the need for an partner at his side.
The record feels really intimate, despite the shades of musical maximalism. Where previous albums included a wider commentary on the world and his place in it (Black Man In A White World, You Ain’t The Problem, Hero), this feels a much smaller orbit. Love, loss, grief, pain, joy are all there in equal measure, but you feel like he’s singing to you and you only, as all good music can feel like it’s enveloping you.
It’s early days, and I know I may not convince everyone, but I am so glad it’s in the world, and a big part of mine too. I just hope Kiwanuka himself can take a long road to recovery and we see him making more in the future. He feels at the peak of his powers, and the loss of that talent would be devastating. Take your time Michael, come back to us.
What I love about music is this: we can discuss it all we like, we can work out why we like or don’t like it, why we connected, why we didn’t – but then now and again something comes along and it just hits EXACTLY the right spot in EXACTLY the right place at EXACTLY the right time.
And that’s what happened to me the first time I listened to FUDGE. It had come out that very morning. I was on a very early flight to Rome with a friend – we were going out to see Caroline for the weekend, who had been at conference there the previous week. My friend who was on the flight with me, had just discovered she may have breast cancer (she does, in fact, but it’s very very early and very treatable). but we were feeling quite emotional about it all as you might imagine (this is not someone you guys know btw, just before you panic about who it is!).
Anyway, I was in that quite emotional state, but also had that strange otherworldly feeling you have when you’ve got up at 5am for a flight and your brain is full of fog and fatigue. I decided to put on Kiwanuka and see if I can catch a few zzzs. From the moment it started, I was completely transported, and it was clear I wasn’t going to sleep, because I was absolutely transfixed. When the album finished, I went straight back to the beginning again. And that, really, has been the story of my relationship with this record from the off.
Why did it connect with me so hard? Was it something about feeling emotional about the world, or is the record doing something that would have connected with me anyway? What I LOVE is that I will never know the answer to that question because my relationship with it is now kind of set in stone.
So what am I loving? What hit me straight off is the rich songwriting, the ambition of the album. My god, it sounds epic. These songs sound timeless in the best possible way, like they existed before time and space, like they somehow emerged from the magic of the universe. And this is a BIG record, not stripped back at all. The songs are quite long and there are quite a few of them. He’s reaching for the moon and my god, I think he succeeds.
I also think it is BEAUTIFULLY curated. I love the way the gentle gorgeousness of California and ends and Just Another Moment kicks in with that driving tempo. I love the wild psychedelic brilliance of Love in My Heart segueing into the simple balladeering of Across the Sky, and then into the screeching guitar (VERY Neil Young!) of Stars. I love the baroque soul of Steve’s Paradise leaking into the incredible Sing, and I love the closing track, Swings and Roundabout so much.
I keep hearing so many influences I love. Here’s a few that stand out:
In other words, a giant smorgasbord of every kind of music I love.
Look, this is in my top 10 very easily. Don’t ask me why I love it. The universe just decided it wanted me to.
This is lovely. I feel quite similar to you, albeit having arrived on a different mode of transport. The first run-through felt like an album I’d been listening to for 20 years. I can’t quite explain it or why, and I can’t really be that rational about it either. But it is majestic.
Michael Kiwanuka – Album Review
Reviewing an album in the aftermath of a significant event in an artist’s life is always a tricky exercise. It’s almost impossible not to view the music through the lens of whatever has happened, often allowing the circumstances surrounding its creation to overshadow the work itself. Think of Ab-Soul’s Herbert or, perhaps more famously, Nirvana’s In Utero. The context becomes part of the listening experience, whether you want it to or not.
But this feels a little different.
Michael Kiwanuka has always had a remarkable ability to create music that feels bigger than the room it’s being played in. His sound is unmistakable: cinematic, expansive, occasionally psychedelic, but always deeply human. There’s a warmth and richness to his arrangements that makes even the most intimate moments feel widescreen. He doesn’t just write songs; he builds atmospheres around them.
There is, however, a question of length. In smaller doses, this is genuinely brilliant music. There are moments of real genius, passages that draw you in and make you stop whatever you’re doing to listen. But the album occasionally struggles under the weight of its own ambition. There is so much to absorb that the experience can become a little overwhelming. Restraint might have made some of its strongest moments even more powerful.
What strikes me most is how much this feels like a continuation of his previous album. Almost an experimental second chapter, taking some of the ideas, textures and musical explorations of that record and pushing them further. That isn’t necessarily a criticism. In fact, there’s something quite compelling about an artist being so comfortable within a particular creative universe that they can spend another record exploring its boundaries. My only reservation is whether the time between the two releases has diluted the impact of what might have been an incredibly powerful, combined body of work.
The idea of Kiwanuka performing alongside an orchestra, live in the studio, is particularly special. There must be something extraordinary about witnessing that combination of musicianship, spontaneity and scale in real time. You can almost imagine the energy in the room. Rather than feeling like a collection of carefully assembled studio recordings, there is a sense of musicians collectively chasing something. That human element is a big part of what makes his music so compelling.
And then there’s the emotion.
I hear a tremendous amount of pain throughout this album. Not necessarily the obvious, outward-facing kind, but something more introspective. A sense of reflection, uncertainty and perhaps even exhaustion. Yet, just when you think the record is going to settle into that darkness, there are moments of extraordinary light. Little glimpses of optimism, warmth and beauty.
Kiwanuka has always played with that particular emotional dial, moving between melancholy and hope, sometimes within the same song. But here, the contrast feels more pronounced. The darkness seems darker, and the moments of brightness feel all the more rewarding because of it.
Perhaps that’s the album’s greatest strength. It doesn’t try to resolve those contradictions. It allows the pain and the beauty to exist alongside one another.
It’s an ambitious, occasionally unwieldy record, and I suspect one that will take a little time to fully appreciate. But there’s something undeniably special about an artist with such a distinctive musical identity continuing to experiment, take risks and explore the emotional possibilities of his sound.
A little too much of a good thing at times, perhaps. But I’d much rather an artist reach too far than play it safe.