After two and a half years of postponements, reschedules and juggling dates, Michael Kiwanuka finally kickstarted his long-overdue UK tour in Glasgow last night. And what an opening night!
With a crack 6 piece band behind him, he ebbed and flowed through a set borrowed from his three albums to date; songs with the spirituality of A Love Supreme-era John Coltrane welded to the thrilling psychedelic soul of The Temptations at their most flare-flappingly brilliant. Guitar lines as clean and simple as the venue’s Art Deco design gave way to whacked out wah wah and phased and flanged wasp-in-a-jar fretboard fireworks as wild and fuzzed as the Afro atop the singer’s head.
The two girls standing to his right sashayed and swayed and smouldered and smiled throughout, adding super-sweet harmonies and call and response chants at the appropriate moments like a pair of recession-trimmed I Threes, Bob Marley’s indispensable trio of on-stage backing vocalists.
At times, the music snaps and breaks its way into hip-hop territory, the pistol cracks of the drummer’s snare sounding looped and sampled, a remnant of a crate-dug ’70s gem relocated to the here and now. At other times, it veers off into out-there Floydish prog; a tickle of Fender Rhodes…a swell of Hammond…an echo-heavy guitar line that ricochets off the back of the hall and returns twice as intense. One of the girls goes all Great Gig In The Sky at one point, tearing the roof off in the process. But it all quickly comes back to the voice, spotlit and centre, gentle and effortless, a mega talent in an era when soul music – proper soul like Leon Bridges and Curtis Harding – is allowed to gestate without the major label suggesting the edges need more polishing. A-men to that, brothers and sisters. A-men to that.
Many of the big songs begin with extended, pared-back preludes, a hint of a melody or a sneaked-in bass line suggesting what’s to follow. You Ain’t The Problem is a soaring, rising call to arms, total Curtis Mayfield in its major 7ths and staccato’d strum, the girls at his side in all-out Pearl & Dean mode. Black Man In A White World is, for me, the set highlight. Political and pointed yet plain downright groovy, the off-beat handclaps carried by the band and audience as one allowing Kiwanuka to scratch the rhythm on his battered old SG and spit out the Gil Scott Heronisms of the verses.
Michael Kiwanuka – Black Man In A White World
The set closes with a flowing, meandering Love And Hate; more Floydisms, more stinging Isley guitar, the vocal ghosting in from the ether between the gaps in the mood lighting, the melody flowing like someone opened up the McCartney tap at full pressure and let it flood out. Thrilling stuff.
Michael Kiwanuka – Love And Hate
Spiritual, emotional, highly-charged and never anything less than majestic, Michael Kiwanuka has started this run of dates in blistering form. Usually, it takes two or three shows into a tour before the artist truly finds their feet. Just imagine what this show will be like by the time the tour reaches its conclusion. Go and see him. He won’t disappoint.
Plain Or Pan 