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Michael Kiwanuka review – big sounds from the quiet maestro

Touring his understated latest album, Small Changes, the Mercury prize-winner amplifies his gossamer grooves with no loss of charm or sophistication

It was pipped to the post by Kendrick Lamar’s impactful GNX, a very different record by a fellow 37-year-old Black male artist, one that wrestled with parallel themes of identity and purpose, community and legacy, just in a very different idiom, almost like two sides of the same coin: hard-hitting hip-hop yang and smoky, mournful, songwriterly yin. The tour’s visuals feel like an intentional ode to the Black family, to tenderness, touch, love and fun In fact, the more acclaim that has accrued around this calm, north London-born artist of Ugandan descent, the more he has decided to pare back his sound. From an admittedly low-key base, his grooves have only grown more gossamer – so much so, the better-known tracks that cluster near the end of the set – the TV sync Cold Little Heart; his first-album hit, Home Again – seem a little brash and route one compared to the more sophisticated, just-enough stylings of many of tonight’s arrangements.

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