On "Turn Around", the opening track and lead single on MCIII, Mikal Cronin sings some sweet bromides about the passing of time. His lyrics are punctuated by little directives, like "Turn it down," "stop," or "turn around," "here it goes," and the arrangement seems to be responding to him, amping up or quieting down depending on the line. Without a devastating hook—like the one on "Weight", the opening track and lead single from Cronin’s 2013 full-length, *MCII—*it feels a bit like listening to stage instructions from a power pop song to be finished later, a rote rehearsal from a tired director.
The consecutive, uniform titles are apt: MCIII plays like a photocopy of MCII, with added incidental noise yielding substantially diminished returns. That said, MCIII was copied from good source material. Cronin sounded radiant on MCII, his supple singing inflected with subtle melodic idiosyncrasies and unfussy displays of considerable vocal range. Still, timing helped him. Cronin’s story—a dynamic songwriter hidden deep within San Francisco’s garage rock nouveau until Merge Records asked for an album—was perhaps one of his best hooks. Devotees of Cronin’s collaborator, Ty Segall, relished the idea of a pianist anomaly in a scene that seemed so singularly fixated on fuzz. It all conspired to artificially inflate MCII’s reception, which helps explain how MCIII sounds so much like it and so disappointing.
MCIII’s press emphasizes that it’s a bigger record, stuffed with strings and horns and whatever else, but it's a red herring, a pretty transparent attempt to distract from the record’s fundamental shortcomings. MCIII’s string quartet contributes no more emotional heft than one violist did on MCII’s "Change", a song that also benefited from the feeling of velocity intimated by players pushing the beat. There’s less of that live ensemble feel to propel MCIII, none of the syncopated groove from a solid MCII track like "See It My Way". Instead, there’s a Greek instrument called a tzouras on "ii) Gold", which sounds pretty cool, but that’s a regrettable swap.
And even a symphony couldn’t redeem a pop-rock record without commanding lead vocals. Here, too, MCIII suffers a bit. Cronin’s dulcet hesitance has given way to slightly meeker delivery. The hooks are there—in the engaging vocal counterpoint to a descending horn line on the bridge of "Say", for instance—but they’re difficult to appreciate. The pat literalism of the lyrics—"I’m not alone," "God, I need some control," "I feel like I’m dying," and the like—doesn't help.
The conceit of MCIII’s second half involves a song suite about loss of personal agency, acceptance, self-discovery, and other such hallmarks of personal songwriting. This quasi-concept is basically indiscernible, indicated only by some hastily appended numerals at the beginning of each song title (One track, the rather beautiful but interlude-like ballad, "v) Different", appeared sans numerals on a compilation last year.) Considering Sonny and the Sunsets’ recent Talent Night at the Ashram and Jack Name’s Light Show, noncommittal concept records are fashionable among Californian garage outliers nowadays, but even a qualified application of the tag to MCIII is a stretch. Once the numerical song suite starts, the most important realization you are left with is that this record is front-loaded.
That’s because "i) Alone" is an arduous intensity hike to nowhere, "ii) Gold" leans on the mid-tempo thud that was tiresome back on Mikal Cronin, and the outro of "iv) Ready" is just mercilessly redundant. Some seething guitar solos crop up, but nothing especially unhinged in light of his earlier collaborative work with Segall and MCII’s ace rave-up, "Change". Cronin’s lithe vocal melodies do sound beautiful on the spry closer, "vi) Circle", a reminder of the voice that commanded so many new listeners last time. Sequenced last, the song title is probably supposed to lend some poetic finality, but it speaks better to Cronin’s creative stasis.
