Michael Kiwanuka has announced details of his fourth studio album ‘Small Changes‘, his first since 2019’s ‘Kiwanuka’.
The album is set for release on November 15, and was produced alongside Danger Mouse and Inflo, who also produced the Mercury Prize-winning ‘Kiwanuka’. As well as the album announcement, the singer-songwriter has shared two tracks, ‘Lockdown (part i)’ and ‘Lockdown (part ii)’, his first new music since the album’s lead single and opener ‘Floating Parade‘, released in July.
The bass-heavy ‘Lowdown (part i)’ is full of soulful guitar, while ‘Lowdown (part ii)’ is a more atmospheric, psychedelic track, but both feel quintessentially Kiwanuka.
The album was born out of a period of change in the singer’s life, most notably the arrival of two children and a move away from London – he was born and raised in the borough of Muswell Hill in the north of the city. Describing the changes, he mentioned an artist friend who told him, “‘The thing about children is that they give you wings.’ I didn’t know what he meant, but now I totally know.”
Before the album comes out, however, Kiwanuka is off to the US on a joint-headline tour alongside Brittany Howard at the end of this month, continuing a busy year for the star after a series of festival slots – including a performance on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in June and a slot at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire the following month.
Michael Kiwanuka – ‘Small Changes‘ tracklist
‘Floating Parade’
‘Small Changes’
‘One And Only’
‘Rebel Soul’
‘Lowdown (part i)’
‘Lowdown (part ii)’
‘Follow your Dreams’
‘Live For Your Love’
‘Stay By My Side’
‘The Rest Of Me’
‘Four Long Years’
Kiwanuka first rose to prominence in 2012 with the release of his debut album ‘Home Again’, which hit Number Four in the UK, while the 2014 follow-up ‘Love & Hate’ became his first album to reach Number One.
Five years later, he released ‘Kiwanuka’, which not only won the Mercury Prize but also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album. It reached Number Two in the UK and was a critical success, with NME awarding it a five-star review.
“Looking ahead even as he evokes the work of greats as such as Bill Withers and Gil Scott-Heron, Michael Kiwanuka’s bravura self-titled record sees him fiercely reclaim his identity,” the review reads. “It’s the sound of an artist examining the politics of prejudice that have led him to self-doubt and out of it again. It’s also the sound of an artist coming into his own through brave and dizzying experimentation. ‘Be free,’ he sings on ‘Light’. It finally sounds like he is.”