Earnest, soulful debut from hotly tipped North Londoner... The BBC’s annual ‘Sound Of’ award has an impressive history of picking the right names for the year ahead. So will Michael Kiwanaku, the Beeb’s choice for “Sound of 2012” likewise go on to sell albums by the lorryload? Probably. Home Again is an arresting, if low key debut, that confirms its creator’s rapid ascent. Last year Kiwanaku, a modest 25 year old from Muswell Hill (of Ugandan parents), was plying his trade as a singer-songwriter in North London pubs. Now he fronts his own band, recently playing to 2,000 people at the Worldwide Awards. Support slots with Adele and Laura Marling have helped his climb, but much of the work was done by last year’s Tell Me A Tale EP – all three tracks are here - that had him widely likened to the folk-soul sound of yesteryear greats Bill Withers and Terry Callier. The comparisons are not entirely fanciful. Kiwanaku’s gruff, direct vocals are akin to Withers’, while his songs are similarly simple affairs driven by acoustic guitar. After that the similarities start to fade. Withers was ex-navy when he made it, a seasoned observer of life and love. The ten songs on Home Again are the heartfelt cries of a young man looking for his place in the world, their vulnerability being part of their appeal. Opener “Tell Me A Tale” hits the spot straightaway, with its plea to “turn me around so I can be /everything I was meant to be”. With its washes of strings and dancing flute contrasting to Kiwanaku’s powerful voice, there’s a touch of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks in play too. Kiwakanu hands credit to producer Paul Butler of The Bees for the orchestral flourishes that wrap around what were previously spartan songs. Having seen Kiwakanu play, Butler offered him his isle of Wight studio and secured him a record deal. The mood of world weariness but hoping for better times is the mainspring of Home Again, with most tracks following the same structure, moving from a bare, acoustic opening into orchestration. It’s an effective ploy, though one arguably over-used, and has helped make “I’ll Get Along” and “Home Again”, feel like a familiar classics after a few months of exposure. Variety arrives in an unlikely shape on “Bones”, the kind of whimsical love call likely to pop up on a Norah Jones album. Kiwanaku drawls and pines for that certain girl while a jaunty massed vocal chorus lends the piece the feel of a 1950s country song. It’s the exception among the ten cuts on offer. “Always Waiting” returns to the theme of “my time is coming soon”set to an intricate piece of guitar picking (a reminder of Kiwakanu’s regard for early Dylan) while “I Won’t Lie” has the singer wondering “what it is that I can’t find”. “Any Day Will Do Fine” is more straightfowardly downcast, a call on God for help, with Kiwanuka’s vocals shifting towards Otis Redding territory. “Rest” evokes another soul great, Al Green, using the kind of crawling pace Green employed on hits like “For The Good Times” – the plea to “rest your head on my shoulder” echoes that song none too subtly - and while Kiwanuka hasn’t Green’s vocal range, he captures sorrow and resignation. The closing “Worry Walks Beside Me” strikes a more defiant note, stretching Kiwakanu to the upper end of his vocal powers but oozing strength. By that time the lack of ups to go with the album’s downs has become apparent, an imbalance addressed in live performance, where the band brings more attack. There will doubtless be more varied shades on future records, but for now, this pensive debut gives notice of a fine new talent. Neil Spencer Q&A MICHAEL KIWANAKU Did you write these songs with orchestration in mind? I always thought of “I Need Your Company’” that way, but I write everything on acoustic guitar. The arrangements came from working with Paul Butler. How did you fit everyone in his small studio? We did it with one violin player and moved him round to sound like a section! It was very spontaneous. That studio has a lot of analogue equipment, and I prefer the sound of valve amps, but we also used Logic– a mix. What of the constant Bill Withers comparisons? I’m starting out, and wear my influences on my sleeve. I listened a lot to Bill and Otis Redding, but more to Shuggie Otis, who’s a fellow guitar player - you can hear the rock and roll influences alongside the soul. You don’t sound as downbeat as the album. Writing anything new? I don’t think of it as downbeat, there’s hope in there too. I’ve written a new one which closes the live set, “Lasan”, named after a Brum curry house. It’s about ho life’s short so live to get the most from it. INTERVIEW: NEIL SPENCER

EA new American maverick finds her voice... Getting out into the wider world is often considered the making of a bedroom musician; the moment that they break through their solipsistic tendencies and begin to produce music with the potential to connect. To point out that LA-based DIY-recording artist Julia Holter studied at CalArts, as did Ariel Pink and John Maus, and that she has frequently collaborated with Nite Jewel’s Ramona Gonzalez, may provoke certain misconceptions about the potential limitations of her work. However, if Ekstasis, her second full-length album, reveals anything about the hitherto relatively unknown 27-year-old, it’s that her approach is anything but environmental, even when recording at home. Ekstasis arrives fast on the back of Holter’s small but loudly acclaimed debut, Tragedy, released on LA-based Leaving Records last year. That LP followed CD-Rs and cassettes released on labels based in Vermont, Philadelphia and Yorkshire, and was based around Euripedes’ Hippolytus, taking many of its lyrics verbatim from the play’s dialogue. It doesn’t take a degree in classical literature to discern that Ekstasis, while rooted in Greek thought, is not the opposite of Tragedy. Its predecessor – complete with “Introduction”, “Interlude” and “Tragedy Finale” – lightly but grandly explored the wholeness of narrative form, and its thick-weft drones and creaks were difficult to separate out into individual pieces. Ekstasis (meaning a transcendent state) takes sensory experience and disconnect as its conceit, allowing its nine songs to exist alone, as well as part of a whole. The record alludes to a burgeoning vision that reaches far beyond the four walls within which it was made, establishing Holter’s maverick status in a lineage that stretches from Linda Perhacs – with whom she’s currently collaborating – to contemporary artists such as Julianna Barwick, whose vocal blanketing is a close relative of Holter’s kaleidoscopic incantations. Holter’s lack of domestic inclination runs surface-level and below ground. Ekstasis genuinely conjures other worlds as harpsichord undulates between rolling grooves and intricate drones, harmonium billows and blusters, and sax stutters carnally. Most strikingly of all, Holter’s layered, glowing madrigal vocal conveys a horde of abbesses using their voices to break down the walls of their cloister. She demonstrates her full range on opener “Marienbad”, named after Alain Resnais’ Last Year At Marienbad, a distinctly strange but deeply satisfying pop song. She starts with monosyllabic intonation, tapping out words like individual notes on a piano, before fracturing to a girls’ choir hell-bent on bastardising the liturgy, and cresting into breathy vocal fanfares without warning. This unpredictability helps divorce the idea of word from meaning, of sense from sensation: something that may well have come from Holter’s work with phonetic translation. At the start of “Marienbad”, she remarks, “I can hear a statue wonder why they’re so still” before wincing at “the human whisper so cold”, and she places obstacles between her faculties and emotions on the sweet helix of “In The Same Room” – “I can’t recall his face, but I want to” – and the spacey, empowered clank of “Goddess Eyes II”, where she laments, “I can see you/But my eyes are not allowed to cry.” “Goddess Eyes I” appears at the end of the LP, though its original incarnation creaked into being on Tragedy. It sums up that these aren’t traditionally ecstatic states, but uneasy conflicts: “This is not the quietness… This is ekstasis,” she intones in a trembling tone, before reversing the statement, eventually letting language dissolve into cries and caws as swing drums dally hellishly with looped cello and grunting sax. Despite exploring convoluted sensory planes, it’s remarkable that the cosmic Ekstasis – recorded in Holter’s home with only five additional musicians – feels surer of itself than Tragedy, a record rooted in millennia-old practice. It’s in that respect – and let’s be unequivocal here, not sonically – that Holter may warrant comparison to Joanna Newsom, as both define their own respective traditions that they then rewrite with each subsequent record. If anyone’s going to assess the limitations of Julia Holter’s work, it’s Holter herself. You can rest assured that she’ll seek to break them on whatever she does next. Laura Snapes Q&A Julia Holter You’re a teacher by day. What does that entail? I work at a continuation school with students who’ve flunked out, had kids or are on probation. I’m one of the few music people there.I have this group of girls who really want to learn piano, which is important. A lot of kids just want to record without learning to play. It’s not that you have to, but that kind of skill is disappearing. As a trained musician, does the amateur culture of experimental music bug you? No. You should just want to do something honest. I feel that certain artists don’t put a lot of soul into their technique. That’s not OK. I used to work at Human Ear and people would send demos they’d made in their bedroom, that sounded like shit. I was working on stuff for years before I got attention. It’s important to have your own time without worrying what others think. You were writing for years before you recorded anything, and didn’t tour while you were recording. Is self-restraint important? I’d have been happy if, in 2007 when I moved back to LA from college, more people had heard my music. I don’t think I intentionally held my music back as I’ve actually been very ambitious, but things just kept happening. I’ve never been good at promoting myself. INTERVIEW: LAURA SNAPES

The Velvet Underground man’s knob-twiddling years. You hire John Cale to produce your record; what do you expect? Logically, you might expect the unexpected, because as a musician, Cale has always been an artful butcher, pulling the guts from songs and snapping the sinews; then adding poetry, or discord, disquiet, or wit. You might also wonder which Cale was going to turn up: would it be John Cage or Dylan Thomas? Waldo Jeffers or Sister Ray? Well, this survey of Cale’s production work comes with a quote culled from Cale’s autobiography, in which he defines the role of the man behind the desk. The producer, he suggests, has to be “a catalyst, an ally, a co-conspirator”. Sometimes, that will mean introducing conflict. “I always try to approach it from the point of view, what would a Zen master do in these circumstances? That is not to give the artist a direct answer to all his questions, but to suggest a solution by other means.” Try telling that to the Happy Mondays. Actually, let’s start there. Cale’s stewardship of the Mondays’ Squirrel And G-Man LP is not regarded as a success. It was, Cale says, “a very quick nightmare”, made more nightmarish by his sobriety. “The band complained that I was on a health kick and that all I did was sit around eating tangerines.” In the circumstances, faced with the task of producing Bez’s maracas, eating tangerines may be the way to go. And Cale goes some way towards making the Mondays sound like a proper group. The palindromic rap, “Kuff Dam”, has a decent groove. If Shaun Ryder could sing, it might qualify as funk. It would certainly be less abrasive. Of course, if Shaun Ryder could sing, the Mondays wouldn’t be Happy: their appeal is based on the singer resembling a hod-carrier in the midst of a lost weekend. In fact, many of Cale’s more successful productions feature vocalists operating within the borders of their own peculiarities. Nico, who was Andy Warhol’s idea of a soul singer – which is to say, she sounded like the bored ghost of the embalmed Marlene Dietrich – has her mannerisms housed within an elegant production, with pretty piano framing her diction. True, she sings like a bad actor playing somebody who can’t sing, but it makes a kind of sense. Cale’s production of The Modern Lovers was regarded a failure. He quit before their debut album was complete, after a breakdown of trust with Jonathan Richman, but, really, he did a great job. “Pablo Picasso” chugs like the Velvets, and Richman inhabits a place between pathos and comedy while the guitar makes noises like insects being electrocuted. With Patti Smith – another vocalist in the process of finding her voice – you can detect the moment she stopped being a poet and became a rock singer. It occurs one minute and 43 seconds into “In Excelsis Deo/Gloria”. The Cale mix of The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is more percussive, less neurotic, than the mix which made the original release. It also sounds more like The Velvets, which is a smaller problem now than it would have been in 1969. Cale’s later productions are less emphatic. There are novelties (Cristina’s “Disco Clone”), gnarly rock’n’roll (Harry Toledo & The Rockets’ “Who Is That Saving Me”) and absolute disasters (“Sex Master” by Squeeze). Sadly, there’s no place for Sham 69’s debut, “I Don’t Wanna”, which is a shame, because it would be nice to know whether Cale was that blame for the unfathomable success of Jimmy Pursey’s Hersham yobs during punk’s twilight. There are two stand-outs. The Velvet Underground’s “Venus In Furs” is fabulous theatre, while Eno/Cale’s beautiful “Spinning Away” marries Eno’s dreamy melodies with off-kilter rhythms. That’s the real lesson here. If you want a bit of John Cale, you need the whole John Cale. Anything less is a Zen tangerine. Alastair McKay