Mikal Cronin – “Weight”

In Endless Playlist, Treble’s staff helps you stock your own playlists by highlighting the best new tracks to come across our desks, laptops and ipods each week.

Listening to “Weight,” the new track from Mikal Cronin’s upcoming album MCII, one gets the sense the San Francisco garage rocker has a similar outlook on life to that of Kurt Vile. Much like Vile, Cronin fills this standout tune with a struggle between self-doubt and the desire for self-improvement, between facing the day and hiding from it altogether. “I’m not ready for another day,” he sings at the outset; “I’m not ready from the weight again/ Take me from myself,” he croons during a sublime climax.

But where Vile might take on his struggles with a hazy, vulnerable drawl, Cronin belts his anxieties to the heavens, turning whatever troubles plague him into a triumphant about-face. It twinkles with opulent piano, quickly rushes into an urgent power-pop pulse, and soon explodes into a lighter-flickering chorus, which ultimately reaches for the heavens in a bridge both inspirational and just plain awesome. Even in what amounts to something of a garage-pop renaissance that begun in the late ’00s or so, this stands much taller and reaches farther. Sometimes a shave and a haircut can go a long way.