There’s a quiet magic running through Kismet, the newly released second album from Matilda Mann. Not the overly polished, grandstanding kind, but something softer and stranger: the feeling of life gently arranging itself around you, of coincidence becoming meaning, of love arriving when you’ve finally stopped looking for it.
Out now, the record finds the London-based songwriter in a very different place to the one that shaped her acclaimed debut Roxwell. Where that album captured the upheaval of early adulthood - relationships ending, homes changing, the emotional mess of trying to understand yourself while everything around you keeps shifting - Kismet feels like its calmer, warmer counterpart. It’s the sound of an artist writing from steadiness rather than chaos, and proving that meaningful music doesn’t always need to be dragged out of pain.
That idea sits at the heart of the album. Mann has described herself as a little superstitious, someone who sees too many coincidences in the world to dismiss them entirely. It gives Kismet both its title and its emotional foundation. These are songs about fate, love, grief, stability and the people we choose to build our lives around, all delivered with the kind of gentle directness that has long made Mann such a compelling songwriter.
Focus track “Chain Reaction” captures the album at its most unguarded. Inspired by the sudden, uncontrollable rush of falling for someone, it leans into the absurdity and beauty of love arriving without warning. Mann frames it perfectly herself: you can be settled, content, getting on with life, and then suddenly a person appears and everything accelerates. That lack of control is part of what makes love so frightening, but also what makes it worth writing about again and again.
Across Kismet, Mann balances that rush with quieter moments of reflection. “Haunt Me” sits with grief and the fear of losing the people closest to you, while “The Fig Tree” draws from Sylvia Plath to explore the paralysis of choice. “After The Love” channels a classic 70s pop warmth, and “Make Up” lingers over the small details of a relationship before arriving at something close to certainty. Rather than forcing the album into one emotional register, Mann allows joy, fear, tenderness and doubt to exist side by side.
Musically, the record is just as beautifully considered. There are traces of 70s soul and soft-rock throughout, with touchstones including Al Green, Bill Withers, Carole King and The Carpenters sitting alongside more contemporary influences. You can hear that admiration for plain-speaking emotional honesty in Mann’s writing too. Her songs rarely hide behind unnecessary complication. They say what they mean, but somehow make the simplest feelings feel newly illuminated.
That directness has become one of her greatest strengths. Raised in Shepherd’s Bush, Mann found her way to lyric-writing before fully understanding songwriting as a craft, moving through flute, violin, piano and drums before guitar finally stuck. A place at BRIT School helped turn a stage-shy teenager into an artist with the confidence to step forward, and since then her rise has felt quietly assured: four EPs, a runner-up finish in Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition, support slots with Tom Odell, Role Model, Laufey and Wallows, and a sold-out headline show at London’s KOKO.
With Kismet, though, there’s a sense of arrival. Not in the sense that Matilda Mann has finished becoming who she is, but that she has found a clearer, more peaceful place to write from. The album’s optimism doesn’t feel naive. It feels chosen. In a musical landscape often drawn towards heartbreak, self-deprecation and emotional wreckage, there’s something quietly radical about making space for joy.
That doesn’t mean Kismet ignores sadness. It simply refuses to let sadness have the final word. Instead, Mann offers a record full of warmth, softness and emotional generosity - an album that understands how fragile happiness can be, but holds onto it anyway.
Matilda Mann will celebrate the release of Kismet with acoustic in-store dates throughout September, followed by a full UK tour in October, including a Newcastle show at University on 10th October 2026.
Kismet doesn’t shout about its significance. It glows with it.
