Five years after the Grammy and Brit-nominated, Mercury Prize-winning ‘Kiwanuka’, Michael Kiwanuka re-emerges with an album that reaffirms his status as one of the defining singer-songwriters of his generation. ‘Small Changes’ sees the 37 year-old singer-songwriter reconvening with co-producers Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton (Gorillaz, Black Keys, Gnarls Barkley) and Inflo (Sault, Adele, Cleo Sol), in the process, extending a creative purple batch that began with 2016’s acclaimed UK number one album ‘Love & Hate’.

Far from being a problem, herein lies the very reason you’ll never find Michael Kiwanuka too far from the guitar that, over the years, he’s come to look upon as “a sort of emotional external hard drive.” At the age of 15, it’s what made him want to climb inside Wish You Were Here, Ain’t No Sunshine and My Sweet Lord – sacred musical scriptures that illuminated the path to his adult self. Between then and now, everything and nothing has changed: “I’m still looking for the next song that will make me feel that way.” If Michael Kiwanuka, a bonafide festival headliner, parks his modesty for a moment and allows himself to hear what we’re hearing when the needle lands on the run-in groove of ‘Small Changes’, then he’ll surely find what he’s looking for.