Full Circle

There’s a quiet bravery in stepping away from what works. On Geography, Tom Misch built a world from his bedroom, stitching together samples with a looseness that nodded to J Dilla and filling it with collaborators like De La Soul, GoldLink and Loyle Carner. It was dense, modern, and unmistakably of its time.

Full Circle moves in the opposite direction. The samples are gone. The guest list has all but disappeared. Misch writes on piano and guitar first, then hands the songs over to a live band in Nashville, guided by Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, with tape machines and a vintage Neumann U47 shaping the sound. The reference points are older, heavier records. The kind your parents kept within reach. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, John Martyn, J. J. Cale. The leap is steep, but Misch commits to it fully.

On ‘Old Man’, he takes stock of time in the most unguarded way he’s ever allowed himself. Grey hairs, family resemblance, a future he won’t see. The melody is spare, the lyric even more so. There’s nothing ornamental here, no production trick to soften the blow. Just a voice, level and direct, letting the thought land.

That same clarity runs through ‘Sisters with Me’, easily the most personal thing he’s written. Living back at home with his siblings, he reduces closeness to something almost childlike in its simplicity. Lines that could tip into cliché somehow hold steady, because he doesn’t overplay them. He just states them and moves on.

The love songs pull in different directions. ‘Red Moon’ leans into something almost devotional, asking the sky for intervention, while ‘Slow Tonight’ snaps into something looser, more immediate, and unexpectedly funny. It is one of the few moments where the record breaks its own stillness. ‘Goldie’ retreats again, overwhelmed but contained, gratitude expressed without flourish.

What gives Full Circle its weight is everything surrounding it. Misch stepping away from touring, from stages like Brixton Academy and Terminal 5, trading them for quieter routines. Working as a barista in Cornwall, driving through Portugal alone, gardening back home. None of it is framed as dramatic. It just is. That same tone carries into the music.

The second half of the record is shaped by fear. ‘Running Away’ observes the world at a distance before admitting it feels overwhelming. ‘Echo from the Flames’ is more direct, almost empty in its imagery. ‘Fear Can’t Hurt Any More Than a Dream’ circles its own idea until it begins to sound like self-reassurance rather than belief. It’s one of the few moments where Misch seems unsure of his footing.

By the time ‘Sultan of Silence’ arrives, the record stops trying to resolve anything. It sketches a figure rather than explaining one. A presence defined by absence. ‘Days of Us’, the album’s lone collaboration, lets two voices drift past each other without landing on an answer. It feels accidental in the best way, recorded back in Deptford as Kaidi Akinnibi drops in and plays, the tape simply left running.

That looseness becomes the album’s thesis. Strip everything back. Trust the song. Trust the voice. Full Circle is not trying to impress. It is trying to hold something steady. And more often than not, it does.