#1451 Mikal Cronin - MC2

Further dispatches from the Segallspehere! This time from longtime collaborator, one time Reverse Shark Attacker, Mikal Cronin himself.

Ah!

But holyshit how far has Mikal come, how much of his own voice does he have. This is as good a pure power pop record as you'll hear all decade, with a Weezerready summer shitkicker sensibility that will make your calf lurch and set your face a'grinnin'. Alongside, whynot, a magical sense of musicianship, spraying down the everpresent towers of acoustic shimmer with those crystaline solos, those crinkling piano lines, the occasional castrophony of overblown strings, all in the service of those feelings too big to live.

And then there's this heart, these songs that will make you think of good times and say out loud "god that makes me sad". It's packed with this impossibly sincere vulnerability that was only hinted at on his debut, moving on from grasping existentialism to something sunnier but still shimmering and shuddering.

"Should I shout it out?" // "Am I wrong?" Cronin asks on back-to-back tracks. Have you ever heard so many first person questions in an album that didn't come across as totally bullshit? And the full line is actually "Am I wrong? . . . [halfagain uncertain beat] . . . I don't think so" delivered with all the confidence of not thinking so and all the wavering of not knowing for sure, your own face in an autumn puddle.

And it all packs together, all that skyrocketing, all that wondering at the world from above, all that drifting to earth slowly and too soon, in a perfectly paced, sprawling, straightthroughlisten once kind of album that we get so few of.

Brilliant, classic stuff that will outlast the ages as a cult classic if there's any justice in the world

5/5