“No heart’s designed / to be alone / but yours and mine / overflow,” UK rock ’n’ soul artist Michael Kiwanuka sings on his latest album, Small Changes. Produced with Danger Mouse and Inflo, it is his follow up to his Mercury Prize winning and Grammy nominated self-titled album after “four long years”, and where that album was a bold and vivacious champion for Civil Rights from across the pond, well deserving of the accolades, his latest album is more subdued and more personal.

It’s an exercise, as he’s shown before, at being comfortable in his own skin. Celebrating the highs of love (“Young hearts burning / wherever they take us to / Oh, darling / I’m always with you”) and the lows of fear (“In rollin’ tides / you’re hoping that I won’t leave the shore”), it is at once an exultant and highly compassionate offering. It takes from the great soul and rhythm and blues’ cannon of the past, and adds modern day classics to a growing music history, influenced from as wide-ranging artists as the Red Hot Chili Peppers (peep the guitar on “One and Only”) and Sade, who he says he played non-stop as a youngster.

It seems to have been a trying time, between albums, but it is also a time where he grew his family, with two new children, of which he found that “the thing about children is that they give you wings.” It may be the inspiration for one of the more hit-worthy songs on the album, the album opener, “Floating Parade,” which embraces the imagination of being in a celebratory crowd, when life is dragging you down. “We can’t be stronger than life itself / We can be solid but hardly make a dent / So I’ll be a full on child for a while,” he sings over a classic funky bass line and skittering drums.

Small Changes is the name of the album, and it prepares you for another subtler side of Kiwanuka. “Small changes / solve the problems,” he proclaims on the emotional loper, followed in Kiwanuka’s characteristic relatable struggle with doubt: “Do small changes / ever last now / or bemoan in my head?” The album covers the range of emotions, but remains classically entrancing, something like a Leon Bridges album. Where Kiwanuka is known for his contagious and bombastic arrangements in the past, this album pushes gently in a new direction, that is, yet, lacking none of the heart of previous albums.

Order Small Changes HERE by Michael Kiwanuka HERE