Michael Kiwanuka – review

Hi-Fi Club, Leeds

Michael Kiwanuka stands centre stage with his eyes closed, shirt hanging awkwardly off his back. The only instrumentation is his guitar and the occasional basslines provided by his friend Pete. It's only when he stops singing and the applause fills the room that you realise he's kept the whole crowd in silent awe.

The 24-year-old sounds like the sort of classic soul man who emerged from the US in the late 1960s or 1970s – specifically Otis Redding or Bill Withers, whose I Don't Know features in the set. Yet Kiwanuka's stark and haunting music is more stripped down, and when he opens his mouth to speak you hear that he is, in fact, a Londoner, with a cockney accent.

Born of Ugandan parentage, Kiwanuka started off as a Nirvana and Radiohead fan playing in rock bands before finding a more soulful calling. But a calling it is: his vocal cords were made to sing soul.

His music is unashamedly retro: Tell Me a Tale has the breezy feel of Van Morrison's Moondance and a brilliant mid-song gear-change, but the likes of Worry Walks Beside Me have a troubled, bleak beauty that resonates with our times. Even his cheerier songs have a dark undercurrent – a seemingly bright love song ends with the punchline that if he can't have her, he'll "leave this world alone".

But the eerie feel is interrupted by banter with the crowd. "I love you, Michael," someone shouts. "Thank you," he beams, revealing that his first headline tour has felt like throwing a party and not being sure whether anyone would come. But there was plenty of cheer for the sublime dispossessed anthem Home Again. "If I was a millionaire, I'd buy you all a drink," he smiles, an offer which people may hold him to if he deservedly takes off.

Contributor

Dave Simpson

The GuardianTramp

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