Gig review: Michael Kiwanuka at The Piece Hall, Halifax

The final song of Michael Kiwanuka’s consistently compelling performance at the busy Piece Hall tonight is performed against a backdrop of footage from what appears to be a particularly rain-soaked festival.

The visuals are quite appropriate this evening’s performance.

After a balmy and clear summer day in Calderdale, the heavens open right on time for the start of Kiwanuka’s set. More importantly, and keeping with the joyful scenes caught on the film, the less than optimal weather conditions barely dent the audience’s appreciative enthusiasm for tonight’s proceedings.

In some ways, the cloud coverage is a somewhat apt metaphor for much of the setlist.

Having established his name with the relatively conventional singer-songwriter moves of 2012’s Home Again (three songs from which he performs unaccompanied tonight, holding the audience’s attention with only an acoustic guitar for back-up), Kiwanuka (born in London to parents originally from Uganda) fully found his own approach with 2016’s creative breakthrough Love & Hate. His 2019 masterpiece Kiwanuka (also produced by Danger Mouse and Inflo, now best known for being the alleged mastermind behind the anonymous Sault collective) dug deeper into themes of identity and cross-section of personal and societal strife established on its predecessor.

Although some of the Kiwanuka’s best-known material is built on robustly uplifting rhythmic vibrancy (Black Man In A White World and You Ain’t The Problem, both dispatched early tonight), the overriding tempo and themes for the 37-year-old London-based songwriter’s live show are troubled, brooding and contemplative, set to slow-burn, unhurriedly evolving grooves that often start with Kiwanuka’s solitary guitar strums: you can imagine songs like the beautiful, yearning I’m Getting Ready and Kiwanuka’s best-known tune Cold Little Heart residing in permanently overcast conditions.

It’s a template that could easily lead to the performance being a one-note, monotonous slog. It’s a testament to both the emotional resonance of Kiwanuka’s sincerely felt songwriting and the expansive, often profoundly funky orchestrations laid out by the instrument-switching five-piece band (alongside three backing vocalists, who infuse the proceedings with a touch of rousing gospel warmth, and guest co-vocalist Lianne La Havas for Rule The World) that for all the similarities of the tempo and mood of much of the material on tonight’s setlist, the performances are full of nuances, arresting hooks and peaks and throughs.

Keeping with Kiwanuka’s two most recent albums (a new track aired this evening promises long overdue new material), the arrangements locate a perfectly harmonious halfway point between soul-baring singer-songwriter sensitivities and luxuriously layered orchestral soul in the mould of, say, Curtis Mayfield or the Isley Brothers.

The results are consistently impressive: the bruised sway of epic opener Hard to Say Goodbye brings to mind the much-sampled, beat-emphasising proto-hip hop productions of David Axelrod, while Hero blooms into hues of wah wah-fueled psychedelic funk, the irresistible high octane exuberance of the music at compelling odds with the questioning lyrics.