Love & Hate | Loppylugs

Submitted by Glyn Lewis on 27 February 2017 - 12:39pm

Nominations had to be from the top 30 of Resident top albums of 2016

Cover:

Artist:

Michael Kiwanuka

album-ID:

a_191

Nationality:

Year:

2 016

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Cold Little Heart*Black Man In A White World*Falling*Place I Belong*Love & Hate*One More Night*I’ll Never Love*Father’s Child*The Final Frame

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_73

Now-num:

2 017

Spotify-URL:

71kreixSBb0aUsk2gx0lcA

Short-title:

LoveHate

nominator-ID:

u_1

Meeting-date:

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

MusicBrainz-URL:

c51bb243-59ac-4de0-9a51-4ead3d4e1bf8

Wikipedia-URL:

Love_%26_Hate_(Michael_Kiwanuka_album)

Spotify-link-type:

album

Metacritic-URL:

love-hate/michael-kiwanuka

Discogs-URL:

Michael-Kiwanuka-Love-Hate/master/1029403

Allmusic-URL:

love-hate-mw0002934664

Musixmatch-URL:

Michael-Kiwanuka/Love-Hate

Pitchfork-URL:

21886-love-hate/

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reviewers-IDs data

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68

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
67

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

There’ll come a time / when the world won't be singing

6-9

2-3

I wouldn’t pretend to be a fan of Marvin Gaye but I find it a bit frustrating to compare the bravery of an artist driven to write original and challenging material about social, political and environmental concerns that were obviously personally important to him, with someone doing stuff with the same sort of feel 50 years later, with no real message or thought at the heart of it. This is slick sounding stuff, with high quality musicianship and is really nicely arranged but under those well-crafted layers of homage I struggle really to find anything individual to engage with at all.

It’s got that typical new millennium vibe of some kid who has spent some time playing through their dad’s varied record collection. Absorbing it and enjoying but ultimately missing out on the intense personal significance the records may have had. In his dad’s record collection I’d guess you’d find Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Meddle, probably some Curtis Mayfield and most definitely Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.

I was interested by a couple of comments I picked up in reviews of this album. One said, “The timely social commentary of lead single Black Man in a White World feels lonesome and heavy..” but if you look at the actual lyrics I can’t see that they really say anything at all. I don’t understand what this song adds to our understanding of the world, even though it is set up as if it will. Another comment was “A bit more than heritage soul to peddle to nostalgic baby-boomers.” I would have to say I’m struggling to find the bit more.
15

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

2

Keep this away from me. Predictable, commercial weak-assed R&B for people who don't like real music.