The Matilda Mann Kismet album arrived on 4 September, and it is the kind of record that makes you want to turn your phone face-down and let the afternoon go wherever it pleases. Eleven tracks of warm, unapologetically romantic songwriting, it follows her debut Roxwell with the confidence of someone who has stopped asking whether she belongs in a room and started rearranging the furniture.
Mann describes Kismet as joyful and nostalgic in equal measure: an album, she says, ‘you’ll always come back to to remind you of better times and that good things are coming.’ The title itself carries that intent. Kismet, she explains, means ‘fate or destiny, representing a force that controls future events and is outside human control’, and she has arrived at it as ‘a beautiful way to describe love and a hopeful way to look at life.’ For an artist whose debut leaned into the textures of growing up, the shift here is one of disposition rather than direction: the folk-inflected warmth remains, but the lyrical architecture is built on surrender rather than searching.
Inventing the Sound of Matilda Mann Kismet
The album’s leading edge was the single released on Spotify as ‘Inventing’, which Mann credits with opening the record to a new audience. ‘It’s really paved the way for this album by bringing on so many new listeners,’ she says, calling it the ‘perfect track to introduce Kismet to the world.’ It is the track she would rescue from a burning building, not a sentimental choice, but a strategic one, and there is something telling about an artist who thinks about her catalogue in terms of doors opened rather than personal favourites.
Her influences for the album are worn lightly but sit deep. She cites Al Green, Carole King and The Carpenters as key reference points, a ’70s lineage of craft and restraint that explains why Kismet sounds full without ever feeling cluttered. The songs deal in uncertainty without indulging it: ‘I like to think that there’s a comfort in leaning into what the universe has in store,’ she says, ‘when you start to think of every rejection as a form of being redirected to somewhere you’re actually meant to be.’ It is the kind of philosophy that could tip into platitude in lesser hands, but delivered over production with this much texture, it holds.
The Brit School graduate has spent the past year building a live reputation to match the records, selling out a headline show at Koko Camden and taking support slots with Tom Odell, Beabadoobee and Laufey. These are not accidental bookings: she fits the lineage of each, without being reducible to any of them.
The UK Tour and That Shepherd’s Bush Homecoming
October brings a full UK run, and the dates, listed on the Matilda Mann official website, map a proper circuit: Manchester Academy 2 on 9 October, Newcastle University on 10 October, Oran Mor Auditorium Glasgow on 11 October, The Trinity Centre Bristol on 13 October, O2 Institute 2 Birmingham on 14 October, and Shepherd’s Bush Empire London on 16 October.
That final date carries its own weight. Mann grew up in Shepherd’s Bush and has never played the Empire. ‘I’m unbelievably excited about it,’ she says, ‘and I genuinely can’t wait. Probably will know everyone in the audience and at one point went to school with them.’ It is a homecoming in the most literal sense, and for an album about fate steering you exactly where you are supposed to be, it is a rather neat full stop.
As for what follows Kismet, Mann admits she has no clear answer yet. She has been, as she puts it, ‘wrapped up in Kismet world’ and is content to stay there a little longer, which, given how fully realised this record is, seems entirely reasonable.
