Michael Kiwanuka could easily be your common-or-garden young soul man, all furrowed of brow, bittersweet of piano chord and gravelly of croon. Pots of gold await that kind of approach, thanks to a record-buying public still heavily invested in the soul revival. Mercury-nominated for Home Again, his graciously turned soul-folk debut of 2012, Kiwanuka has been awol for four years, crafting his second album alongside producers such as Home Again’s Paul Butler, Londoner Inflo and celeb import Danger Mouse, watching poseurs such as James Bay get famous.
There’s a good amount of bittersweet furrow ’n’ croon on the 29-year-old’s second album, Love & Hatecorrect (the title presumably taken from Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate): 10 tracks in which relationships fail to work out in storybook fashion; Kiwanuka contemplates whether or not he is his father’s child; and current events in the big, bad world press in antagonistically.
A key track, Black Man in a White World, for instance, starts out as just handclaps and vocals, rootsy to the point of cliche. But give it a minute and the swelling song spells out the saudade of racism in a way that even those unwittingly basking in white privilege can understand: “I’m in love but I’m still sad/ I’ve found peace but I’m not glad,” Kiwanuka sings. Granted, it’s not quite the goosebump-inducing, Marvin Gaye epic. But the ecstatic music swirling around Kiwanuka gives his weary message broad wings.
The looser-limbed One More Night, by contrast, has something of the roll of the Black Keys (Danger Mouse clients) to it, stitched together with crisp details where the combination of parping organ and bright horns could be so much more textbook.
You do feel a stronger shiver when Kiwanuka’s thoughts turn inwards. The album opens on Cold Little Heart, a five-minute meditation on his own organ’s failings, prefaced by a slightly unconventional, five-minute overture in which orchestral soul trades off with Pink Floyd guitar. All told, it’s a touch too grandiose, but littered with gems of hard-won self-knowledge. “Maybe this time I can be strong,” Kiwanuka sings, “But since you know who I am / I’m probably wrong.”
The same unflattering self-portrait resurfaces on songs such as the exceptional Falling. Kiwanuka’s delivery is a combination of delicacy and exhaustion, telling of an on-off relationship drained of all hope. “I’m a man that belongs alone,” Kiwanuka tells us. His eloquent orchestra is cut off at least a minute too soon. Four songs along, on I’ll Never Love, Kiwanuka is still sounding bereft, while his music is generous, a country-soul track full of succour.
The Final Frame ends things with Kiwanuka singing tenderly about the end of a relationship, one framed by “the times I’m living through”. A squally electric guitar solo lets you know Love & Hate isn’t just another slice of vintage soul, but something a little more intriguing than that.
