Michael Kiwanuka ‘Fudge’ review: A beautiful but bittersweet reminder of his brilliance
Recorded just months before the singer suffered a catastrophic stroke, this album is a renewed reminder of his unbelievable talent.
Though Michael Kiwanuka’s new album, FUDGE, was written and completed years ago, it’s impossible to listen without the shocking context in which it was announced. The London-born, Southampton-based songwriter told fans that he had suffered a stroke after a bleed on the brain, which led him to undergo intensive surgery and spend time in ICU, before entering a rehabilitation facility where he remains today.
Kiwanuka said in his message that his health issues will “heavily hinder and get in the way of me making music for the foreseeable future”, and FUDGE – recorded in tandem with his 2024 album Small Changes – arrives as a bittersweet but beautiful reminder of his songwriting brilliance.
For the album, Kiwanuka moved away from the collaborative team that he had made records with for the previous 13 years, instead stripping things back to their purest and most minimal form. He said: “I had to do it differently from the last few records, otherwise there was no reason for this record.” Sonically, this is borne out in songs that unfurl slowly and beautifully, unburdened by traditional structures or constraints.
Four songs pass the six-minute mark and all have a languid and freewheeling energy. Most stunning is ‘Drowning in Your Heart’, a strikingly simple song with just voice, electric guitar and the same chords you’ve heard a million times. In Kiwanuka’s hands, though, it becomes a deeply impactful tune indebted to Elliott Smith and written as a loving nudge to a friend who is “so sad they’ll sabotage everything”.
Across the album, the Kiwanuka of a few years ago grapples with creative tensions and existential worries about the purpose and meaning of making mu-sic at all. In the new context of his illness, the purpose now couldn’t feel any clearer.
FUDGE begins with a speech from late jazz pianist Chick Corea, who says: “Whatever you think is beautiful is beautiful, and you have to pursue that.” How-ever long it is until Kiwanuka is able to write and release music again, FUDGE is a gorgeous and timely reminder of continuing to follow that path towards beauty. W. R.