Album Review: Small Changes by Michael Kiwanuka

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.

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The Mercury winner returns with an album of beauty, majesty and lovelorn splendour It’s been five years since Michael Kiwanuka‘s sublime third album Kiwanuka, a record that was not only a career best for the London musician but one that introduced him to a whole new audience thanks to winning the Mercury Prize in 2020. Small Changes is an appropriately titled record for Kiwanuka’s return. All the elements remain – he’s linked up with Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton and Sault‘s Inflo on production duties, and the overall sound is the sort of lush, languid atmosphere that anyone’s who’s followed Kiwanuka’s career will be familiar with.

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Although the arrangements include elements (strings, massed voices) that usually indicate epic aspirations painted on the widest possible canvas, the album utilises these ingredients sparingly. The default setting here is, well, smaller, and certainly more lowkey and intimate, than the psychedelically tinged orchestrations of 2019's masterful Kiwanuka. Throughout Small Changes, the focus remains unstintingly on the singer - and most of all the songs.

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It would be easy to assume that, following the overwhelming success of his partially self-titled release five years ago, that Michael Kiwanuka might have felt the pressure this time around. Judging by the effortless ease with which his fourth album saunters into view, though, that couldn't be further from the truth. Once again returning to work with producing masters Danger Mouse and Inflo - completing, at least for now, a trilogy of collaborations - 'Small Changes' is a beauty of a record, once again showcasing Michael's innate ability to produce songs that feel both timelessly classic yet still grounded very much in the present.

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Michael Kiwanuka's return at Glastonbury this year represented one of the weekend's most imposing sets. Though the songwriter's catalogue may be slim, it's littered with jewels, most notably his Mercury winning set 'KIWANUKA'. News of fresh material, then - one song was unveiled live-and-direct on the Pyramid Stage - immediately caused ripples across the site.

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