Michael Kiwanuka "I'm Getting Ready" EP
Preparations for the major league
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From the sepia portraits, to the mock wear-and-tear of the record cover, it’s as if we are to believe that this new EP is a lost document from a bygone age. In some ways it isn’t that much of a dishonest rouse.
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Kiwanuka is a young acoustic troubadour from London, and this second EP comes courtesy of the Mumfords-sponsored Communion label. Adding further to his chances of success, National radio seem interested, and he has been out and about supporting Adele of late. Despite his youth, Kiwanuka adopts a believable, and attractive, world-weary croon, and a way with the nuances of arrangement that puts his new-generation contemporaries very much in the shade.
Lead-track ‘I’m Getting Ready’ possesses the rare sonic tranquillity of mournful acoustic guitar and strings that do sound genuinely like a Nike Drake moment. Kiwanuka takes this as a base to begin from, a melancholic, introverted hymn, and proceeds to make it both believable and indeed somehow entirely his own. Kiwanuka is a picture of restraint, as he prepares to surrender and accept the control of a higher power; Strings and voices in the background stir up portentous atmosphere, and a spine-tinglingly melodic bridge walks the song back into its gentle stride, then somehow reaches calm, acceptance and conclusion in an astoundingly beautiful, and emotional 2 minutes and 25 seconds. ‘I Need You By My Side’ utilises similar alluring ingredients, though makes more of the genuine soul cadences in Kiwanuka’s vocal style which have traces of Bill Withers about them.
By comparison, the other song here ‘Any Day Will Do Fine’ is a sly mood piece which shuffles subtly amidst jazzy guitar flourishes and soft horns. A string section joins in towards the end, with ambiguous melodic suggestions which then crown the mesmerising intoxicating mood. Something like Terry Callier messing around with a particularly sexy Bond theme.
This music already has a genuinely ‘classic’ feel to it. As such, it isn’t entirely original, and the likes of Bill Withers, Van Morrisson, and old Blues/Gospel masters are more than hinted at. In fact the music on this EP could realistically have been made at absolutely any time over the last 50 years. Time capsule or not, it is however just plain fantastic music. Just when you thought boring acoustic-wielding, troubadour-style, singer-songwriting had been done to absolute death and back, Kiwanuka just arrived like some glorious and unexpected fresh air.
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