The day before MCII
May 6, 2013 found Mikal Cronin in two frames at once. Adult Swim released Garage Swim, a free 15-track compilation of previously unreleased material from artists including Black Lips, Thee Oh Sees, King Tuff, JEFF the Brotherhood, the Gories and Weekend. Cronin’s contribution, “Better Man,” occupied the eighth position in the contemporary track listing. Accompanying the music was a seven-minute Yours Truly mini-documentary devoted to Cronin, directed and produced by Babak Khoshnoud and Will Abramson. Pitchfork’s same-day report documents both releases and their shared presentation.
The timing made this more than a compilation appearance. Merge Records was scheduled to issue Cronin’s second solo album, MCII, on May 7. That record was his first for the label and arrived after a period in which he was still commonly introduced through his work with Ty Segall. A May 3 profile described Cronin as a member of Ty Segall Band while identifying MCII as his second solo album; the phrasing captured how close he remained to the border between sideman and independent songwriter. Pitchfork’s pre-release profile preserves that snapshot.
The two May 6 features approached the border from opposite directions. Garage Swim placed Cronin inside a crowded garage-rock ecosystem. The Yours Truly film moved closer, following him through the Mission District, a studio and the basement where he worked. One supplied the scene; the other supplied the songwriter. With MCII waiting one day away, both helped explain why Cronin belonged to that community without being limited by its most familiar sounds.
What “Better Man” joined
The original Garage Swim sequence began with Bass Drum of Death’s “Dregs” and passed through Apache Dropout, Thee Oh Sees, King Tuff with Gap Dream, JEFF the Brotherhood and Black Lips before reaching Cronin. Later entries included Mind Spiders, Cheap Time, OBN IIIs, the Gories, King Khan and Weekend. Adult Swim’s surviving player retains all 15 selections, although it now displays them in a different order and places “Better Man” second. Adult Swim’s official archive and the period Pitchfork list together establish the contents while revealing how the presentation has changed.
That roster was broad enough to make “garage rock” feel less like a fixed recipe than a shared point of departure. The Gories connected the compilation to Detroit’s earlier garage-punk resurgence. Black Lips and King Khan represented distinct strains of rowdy revivalism; Thee Oh Sees brought San Francisco psych-garage momentum; Weekend’s closing demo leaned toward a more atmospheric edge. In its May 6 coverage, Stereogum described the compilation as evidence of an unusually fertile American garage-rock underground and specifically identified Cronin among its new contributions.
“Better Man” belongs in that company through its union of melody and distortion, yet it also points toward the distinctions MCII would make clearer. The song does not treat noise as a disguise for the tune. Its surge works because a melodic structure is already carrying it. Cronin’s strength at this moment was not an escape from fuzz, hooks or the musicians around him; it was his growing command over how those elements could be weighted against one another.
That balance matters because the garage-rock tag could obscure as much as it revealed. By 2013, Cronin had a 2011 self-titled solo album behind him, a long association with Segall and experience in several interconnected California bands. He was neither a newcomer nor merely an anonymous participant in a compilation. The release-day question was whether listeners would continue to hear him as an adjunct to a scene or recognize the more deliberate pop craft emerging inside it.
A mini-documentary at neighborhood scale
The Yours Truly film answered by keeping its scale local. According to the surviving contemporary account, Khoshnoud and Abramson followed Cronin around San Francisco’s Mission District, into a studio and down to his work basement. The film included discussion of contradiction on MCII, his musician mother and the satisfaction of having a listener relate to a song. It was not presented as a conventional performance video or an extravagant origin story. Its subject was a working musician moving among the spaces in which his songs took shape.
That geography was concrete rather than decorative. MCII had been recorded during late 2012 in San Francisco, apart from “Don’t Let Me Go,” which Cronin recorded at home. Merge’s official notes state that guest musicians appeared but that Cronin played the other instruments himself. The label also frames the record as a response to changes since his debut, including his move to San Francisco and extensive touring. Merge’s album page confirms the May 7 release date, catalogue number MRG475, ten-song sequence and core production account.
A release-eve interview supplied additional physical detail. Cronin told 7x7 that most of the album had been recorded at Eric Bauer’s Bauer Mansion, a Chinatown basement studio. The article describes him filling the 24 available tracks of two-inch tape with layered instrumentation and identifies appearances by Segall, Charlie Moothart, Petey Dammit and K. Dylan Edrich. The May 6 7x7 profile therefore makes the basement setting in the film legible as part of a real recording network, not just picturesque scenery.
Seen in that context, the documentary’s route through the Mission captured the practical meaning of a music scene. A scene is not only a recognizable guitar tone. It is also a set of rooms, engineers, guest players, rehearsal spaces, labels and friendships. Cronin’s album could be largely authored and performed by one person while still depending on that surrounding infrastructure.
Expanding the arrangement without losing impact
Several months before release, Cronin had already explained how his methods were changing. In a January studio interview, he described MCII as larger and more filled out than his earlier work. The album was recorded with Eric Bauer in San Francisco and mixed at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Cronin also discussed studying arrangements, writing string parts for the first time and using enough piano and keyboard to consider expanding his touring band. SPIN’s January 23 interview establishes those ambitions before the album’s promotional cycle reached its peak.
The same interview clarifies the collaborators’ roles. Segall contributed two guitar solos, while Moothart played drums on two songs. Those appearances were selective rather than controlling. Familiar musicians supplied particular colors to a record whose structure and instrumental identity remained Cronin’s responsibility. The result complicates any simple opposition between solitary authorship and collective scene-making: MCII was unmistakably his album, but it was built in conversation with people, studios and techniques already close at hand.
The record’s track list shows the range of that design. “Weight” opens the album, followed by “Shout It Out,” “Am I Wrong,” “See It My Way,” “Peace of Mind,” “Change,” “I’m Done Running from You,” “Don’t Let Me Go,” “Turn Away” and “Piano Mantra.” Across that sequence, acoustic passages, strings, piano and carefully rationed distortion expand the palette without turning the album into an exercise in decoration. The arrangements repeatedly give uncertainty a physical form: restraint can break into volume, and apparent confidence can expose a more unsettled interior.
Contemporary criticism recognized that distinction before the official release. On May 2, Pitchfork’s review of MCII argued that Cronin had found an unusually effective balance between power and pop, emphasizing the purposeful placement of strings, fuzz and slide guitar. Two days later, Slant’s review similarly heard a more polished and balanced album than the 2011 debut, with concision and emotional openness taking precedence over garage-rock posturing. The agreement is significant: the broadened instrumentation was not being heard as a retreat from force, but as evidence of greater control.
“Don’t Let Me Go” offered the clearest counterweight to the fuller arrangements. Recorded at home, it reduced the music to voice and acoustic guitar. Its presence prevented MCII from being defined solely by the added resources available at Bauer Mansion or Fantasy Studios. Cronin’s advance was not a matter of piling on instruments. It was the ability to decide when density served a song and when it did not.
Why the May 6 pairing endures
The compilation and documentary make a particularly useful archival pair because they resist two incomplete versions of Cronin. In one, he is simply another garage rocker in a prolific San Francisco orbit. In the other, he is a solitary auteur who escaped the scene’s limitations through formal arrangement. May 6 presented evidence for both proximity and independence.
“Better Man” sounds at home among Garage Swim’s 15 tracks because Cronin understood the propulsion, distortion and economy that connected many of its artists. The Yours Truly film, meanwhile, turned toward his working spaces and the contradictions behind the imminent album. MCII joined those perspectives: its pop architecture did not erase the community around it, and its moments of noise did not subordinate the songwriting.
That is why this release-eve snapshot remains more illuminating than a simple announcement. It catches Cronin at the instant when his established affiliations and his individual ambitions were most visibly overlapping. On May 6, he could still be introduced through Ty Segall, placed naturally beside Thee Oh Sees and Black Lips, and filmed in the modest rooms of his San Francisco routine. On May 7, MCII would make the larger case—that those connections were a foundation from which a distinctive arranger and songwriter could step forward.