Driving home from town a few Saturdays ago, I listened to Gilles Peterson on 6 Music. He was interviewing Daudi Matsiko, an artist I’d not encountered before. The music he was playing was unlike anything I’d heard in a long time, the most fragile vocals delivering heartbreaking lyrics over the sparsest of instrumentation. His song “I am Grateful for My Friends” really struck a nerve with me, and I sat in the car outside my house and felt like this music had touched me in the same way as on my first listen to The Smiths forty years ago. Daudi’s album King of Misery is available now on Really Good Records. On the sleeve, Daudi urges us to contact the Samaritans if “You’re experiencing depression, or in a similarly dark place I was when these songs were written.” They can be called on 116 123...