"Small Changes" is Michael Kiwanuka's new album

“God knows I gotta be,” sings Michael Kiwanuka on his fourth album, “bringin’ the best of me this time”. Five years after the acclaimed and deeply accomplished Kiwanuka, he aspires to do just that on Small Changes, in more ways than one. Not only a record that reflects on a need to rise to the tests of marriage and parenthood, it also locates and distils his purest virtues: that soft voice, the open-eared attitude to influences, the emotionally charged guitar and - above all – the searching, soulful depths of his writing.

If the result is a sparer album than its sometimes saturated predecessor, it’s none the lesser for it. The impression of an artist leaning into his strengths and instincts is clear as the Marvin Gaye-ish Floating Parade’s portrait of communal release - with its sense of people unified, not divided - lifts off on a note of humble surrender. “We can’t be stronger,” sings Kiwanuka, “than life itself.” As soulful strings swoon, Kiwanuka’s vocal seems buoyed by that realization, not dwarfed.

The mellifluous title track is similarly weightless yet enriched by influence. Taking his cue from a conversation with returning producers Danger Mouse and Inflo (of Sault fame) about Gene Clark, Kiwanuka sounds liberated by a declared willingness to grow as a man and a musician. Other perhaps unexpected influences weave in and around the songs, with Rebel Soul nodding to Portishead before Lowdown (Part I) merges echoes of Blur and Zamrock for a reflection on self-identity. Collaborators including Jimmy Jam (of Jam and Lewis fame) and Pino Pailadino testify to Kiwanuka's open-eyed perspective, well integrated into the record’s elastic reach.

Home is the sun around which these influences circulate, its call lovingly tended to in song. Its opening guitar evoking John Frusciante's Under The Bridge arpeggios, One And Only exults in emotional constancy. On a record shaped as a proper, old-fashioned album, with David Gilmour- influenced instrumental Lowdown (part II) at the flipping point, the album’s second half deepens to develop and test Kiwanuka’s declarations of romantic and parental faith. 

Self-doubt has long been his companion, and Live For Your Love contemplates fear of failure before family's test. With its psychedelic soul strings and celestial harmonies, Stay By My Side seeks anchorage against the elements, Kiwanuka setting the pull of “rolling tides” against the hope of a sturdy shore. Here in particular, his guitar rises to the song's expressive demands with rapturous feeling.

The Rest Of Me looks back and forwards, contemplating what’s required of Kiwanuka in the face of new challenges with nods to youthful memories of Sade’s Diamond Life, while closer Four Long Years maps out a sorrowed song of separation. Is it a song of fear for an unguaranteed future, a lament for lost loves, or a warning to himself of what he might lose should he drop the ball? However you slice it, Small Changes sounds out a determination to commit with the soft, sure confidence of conviction. It’s a record built to last, from an artist both asserting his footing and opening himself wide, embracing the demands of changes big or small.