Mikal Cronin-Apathy/Get Along

Ty Segall decided to to mellow out this year with Goodbye Bread, which can be viewed as both a good and bad thing. While I'm still adjusting to Segall's new sound, I can turn to his buddy Mikal Cronin for my fuzzed out garage fix. If you heard that name before, it's because Cronin is a staple of the California garage scene, being member of the Moonhearts and teaming up with Segall himself to release Reverse Shark Attack back in 2009. This should all but spell out the type of garage credentials that Cronin has, which are all fully exposed with "Apathy". A quick off-key acoustic guitar strumming morphs into a glorious mess of the most trebled guitars and haphazard drumming ever. Why "Apathy is so great is how it uses so many different parts perfectly. The rather intense verse turns into a suddenly, yet wonderfully catchy chorus. Then at the end a Beefheart worthy sax attack kicks in which adds even more chaos to the tune, but folds into the song with such ease you can't imagine the song without it.

(mp3) Mikal Cronin-Apathy

"Get Along" is definitely a much mellower tune, and will start to draw those Ty Segall comparisons. Not to say those comparisons would be too far off, but would be summing it up too easily. A simple guitar tone held steady by a galloping guitar and simple percussion. It has a Black Lips feel to it, when the Black Lips have ingested a large amount of drugs and slowed down. More importantly it emphasises something that was made apparent by "Apathy"; Cronin has the uncanny ability to go from angular to catchy instantly in his songs giving them unbelievable style and depth in a genre where that is so hard to pull off.

(mp3) Mikal Cronin-Get Along

Links:

Mikal Cronin's Myspace
Pre-order Mikal Cronin's debut here, from Trouble in Mind Records