KAWALA

BY JULIE BOYLE

NOW MORE THAN EVER, WE all need some joy in our lives, so there’s no better time for the return of Kawala.

The five-piece from Kentish Town - Jim Higson, Daniel McCarthy, Ben Batten, Reeve Coulson and Dan Lee - have been a ray of sunshine in the UK music scene for the last few years, mixing indie, folk and afrobeat with socially-conscious but positive lyrics, alongside unique live shows that are more like a jubilant gathering of friends than anything else.

After finding their much-anticipated tour with heroes Bombay Bicycle Club cancelled when last year’s lockdown kicked in, the lads regrouped and threw themselves into the only thing they could do - writing more songs. The result is the glorious Paradise Heights, a six-track mixtape that is custom-built to soundtrack a Summer of reconnection and celebration.

It’s a collection that sees the young band at the peak of their creative powers and features a track co-written by previous tourmate Justin Young, as well as a cover of Griff and Honne’s 1000000x Better. Oh, and it’s accompanied by a new Youtube series of the same name that reveals Kawala are just as talented at producing comedy as they are music. Make no mistake, this is a band who are determined to make the very most of what has been a difficult time and they’re bringing everyone else along with them. Guitarist Daniel said: “The songs have all come from various different places. Some are really old, some are really new. The pressure was taken off completely with this project as it’s not an album, it’s just a collection of music that we felt was the right time to put together. They’re all mostly really upbeat songs, so with the Summer coming, everything opening up again and people coming together finally, it just felt like the perfect time for this mixtape to come out.

Lockdown was a weird period, as it allowed us to take a step back from the speed that everything was going and focus on the most important thing, which was the music that we wanted to put out. We were having conversations about doing an album, but

it just didn’t feel right, especially after the year and a half that we’ve all just had. So a mixtape felt like the best option, as it’s somewhere between an EP and an album, but still has that progression we wanted. It worked really well, as when we looked at the new songs we had come up with alongside the older tracks, they just complimented each other perfectly. It was under our noses the whole time. It’s a soundtrack to the Summer. We need positivity right now ourselves, but so does everyone.”

Naturally, frontman Jim is on completely the same wavelength as his pal, saying : “We’re really positive people and I think that shows in our music. Throughout lockdown we’ve been releasing hopeful music, just like we always have done. There’s so much sadness in the world right now, we need positive and hopeful music all the more. We want to just keep making people smile. We’ve been putting out music for three or four years now and while we’re proud of it all and we’ve had our thing, we’ve still been honing exactly what that thing is. I think with this mixtape we have really got as close as we have ever got. We had gotten a bit over-serious a while back, so this definitely reinjects the fun, the joy and the hope in our music, which is a big part of what we are about.”

One of the standout tracks on Paradise Heights is undoubtedly Arms Wide Open, an instant classic the lads co-wrote with The Vaccines’ Justin Young.

Jim said: “We’d been on tour with The Vaccines and George Ezra in 2019 and got to know them pretty well. We watched them play every night and were in awe of how good The Vaccines were and their songwriting. Justin is such a good writer, so when he asked if we wanted to do a song together, of course we said yes. It was great as it let us have the opportunity to write in a different way. We initially came along with some heavy indie-sounding ideas like we expected him to be wanting, but as soon as we sat down with him, we all came up with a very pop chorus. He was really cool and had a real intelligence to his writing. It was a great experience and we couldn’t be happier with the track itself.”

Jim said: “It’s like Country music, so much of it sounds upbeat and happy, but the subject matter can often be really miserable. We like making really positive, happy-sounding Summer sounds, but sometimes the lyrics can be much more than that. We like to write about real and difficult subjects, either from our own experience or things that friends have gone through, but we always want to come from a position of ‘how can we deal with this and make things better/’, rather than just saying how awful things are. Music more than anything for us is hopeful, so that’s what we do, we make self-help songs. Primarily for ourselves, but if they help anyone else, that’s even better.”

Their lighter side is front and centre in that Youtube show too. With it’s surreal and hilarious take on communal band life, Paradise Heights the series comes over like a cross between The Monkees and The Mighty Boosh (The Monkee Boosh, anyone?) and adds another string to the band’s bow that they hope will connect

with people just as much as their music.

Daniel said: “It’s something we’ve always wanted to do, as we’re big fans of comedy as well as music, but it’s such a different thing for us to do that we knew it might not connect with people, but it seems to be going down really well so far. We really like the idea that as we grow as artists, we are always going to have this series that we made that people can connect with at any time. There’s five episodes planned, but if people want more, maybe we will do a second series or a Christmas special. We did it to fill the gap for our fans that the lack of gigs had left, so when we get back to live music, will we have time? I’m not sure, but it’s a nice idea.

DEBUT MIXTAPE RELEASE ‘PARADISE HEIGHTS’ OUT NOW, NOVEMBER UK TOUR

Kawala’s music is rarely anything other than an exuberant and positive affair, but the sunshine in their melodies invariably is accompanied by lyrical subject matter that is much more serious. The band make a point of addressing issues such as mental health, inequality and community, but they never wallow in it, preferring instead to offer hope and solutions.