Review: Tom Misch – ‘Full Circle’

After a five-year silence shaped by burnout, self-imposed retreat, and a quiet but necessary reckoning with who he was outside of music, Tom Misch has returned with ‘Full Circle’, a beautifully delicate, honest and emotionally resonant sophomore album that deliberately moves away from Logic Pro and production-led music creation to focus on classic, stripped-back songwriting with authenticity. 

Celebrating the sophomore with two sold-out shows at London’s KOKO just less than two weeks ago, which featured special guest appearances from Loyle Carner, Jordan Rakei and Zak Abel, who all featured on 2015’s ‘Beat Tape 2’, ‘Full Circle’ has since gone on to debut at number 9 in the UK albums chart last Friday, receiving wide acclamation and praise in the process. 

At its core, it’s a deeply personal and authentic project, both a reflection of his journey and a statement of his ongoing evolution that honours his past while pointing towards a new direction. Released in 2018, Misch’s last full album ‘Geography’ was predominantly orientated around jazz influences, sample culture and the beauty in collaboration, whereas ‘Full Circle’ instead looks inward, finding home in exploring themes of vulnerability, family, and the slow process of finding yourself again, whilst prioritising more traditional methods of musical creation.

The project draws from songwriting and textures from artists such as Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young & others, balancing classic fidelity with intimacy, and also helping to create the sound of something cross-generational in a sense. Recording vocals using a vintage U47 microphone, the album is, of course, tinged in vintage undertones, a beautiful juxtaposition in the sense that it is steeped in nostalgia but also refreshingly current and innovative. With clean guitar lines and saxophone melodies, Misch’s voice carries the emotional weight of each track, with the instrumentation guiding his narrative introspection. 

With tracks such as ‘Slow Tonight’ projecting a subtle groove that merges his past and present without forcing any correlation, ‘Sisters With Me’ stands as a tender meditation on family and shared life, with beautiful cinematic visuals accompanying the track. Further exploring introspective themes, ‘Old Man’ confronts ageing and acts as a reflection of time passing, whilst looking to his future self – “maybe I’ll play this song when I’m 80, I’ll have a son and a family, he looks a bit like his old man, my old man”. It’s Misch’s lineage and bloodline embraced, merging perspectives of the present and the yet to be, definitely something that may have felt too raw in his previous projects. Looking away from numerous collaborations on this project and stripping it back with individuality, the sole feature on the album, ‘Days Of Us’ draws in the very talented saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi, who provides a flanging riff that lingers through an alternating EQ, projecting it in and out of the mix and to further spotlight Misch’s vocal – a fantastic closing track.

Lyrically, Full Circle is unflinching. Misch confronts fear, exhaustion, mental burnout, and the strange disorientation of fame with a plainspoken honesty that never reaches for poetry when a simple truth will do. Relatable and painfully honest at times, the tone is set from start to finish, ‘Flowers in Bloom’ opening the dialogue of the album with Misch articulating the acceptance of change and growth in all aspects of life. A wonderfully rounded project, the record circles themes of identity, connection, and the glimmers of quiet once the outside noise stops. It’s a reflection of struggle in some sense, but also a look to optimism and self-acceptance of, situationally, how the world has spun around him for the past five years. 

And it would be impossible not to mention the intimacy of Misch’s voice throughout. It emulates a fine red wine, smooth but poignant at particular points, raw and cognitively sharp when the time is right. It’s warming and homely, something that makes everything seem like it will all be ok even when the subject matter is something heavier. A seamless forty minutes of authentic, meaningful music, after years away from the very thing he loves that clearly took a real toll, emerging with an album as honest, assured, and quietly beautiful as ‘Full Circle’ is no small feat. If you haven’t made time for it yet, clear your afternoon, put on your headphones, and let it speak for itself. It’s a cracking album start to finish.

Rating: 9/10