![]() ![]() Intended as a complement to Swimming, Circles’ sound detours just enough while maintaining the ying-yang balance that Miller wanted. #MAC MILLER FULL DISCOGRAPHY MAC#Brion produces every song in an authentic Mac Miller style, impressive considering that he had to complete the album without the man himself to consult. The side dish is the synthesizers arranged by Jon Brion into soft shelves to hold up the guitar. A little less funky than on Swimming, they still provide the meat of the music whether in the running riffs or the more rambling detours at the end of a track as the music quietens. ![]() By ‘Surf’ he has floated to a sharp higher register like he’s tip-toeing over the buzz-saw guitar riff. On the lead track ‘Circles’, he switches to a gentle singing like he’s lulling himself to sleep. It’s his voice, and its ups and downs, moving from mumbling to morning-air clarity that does the heavy lifting. The lyrics on ‘Good News’ stand out, but some of the songs are peppered with trite remarks and a few lazy rhymes, which leads you to realise that the words don’t do the work here. As a single ‘Good News’ gets the message of the album across in a misty five and a half minutes. It’s not all so gloomy, though: ‘Haven’t seen the sun in a while but I hear that sky’s still blue’ he goes on, and he ends on the refrain that maybe he’ll discover that ‘It ain’t that bad’. He sounds as tired as the lyrics suggest. “Can’t it just be easy / why does everybody need me to stay?” he says, followed by “Can I get a break? / I wish that I could just / get out my god damn way”. Later in the track though, just once or twice, those tones reverse and climb back up the other way, straight towards a sunnier sound. Three falling notes form the centrepiece of the song, as they tumble down from tone to tone the sadness comes with them. The lead single ‘Good News’ epitomises these blacks and whites, and it’s a devastating track. It maintains a musically coherent and addictive low buzz The whole album balances these heartbreaking moments of tiredness from the bottom of a Xanax trip with beautiful sunlight as he opens the curtains. It’s a joy to know that among all the benzos, fadings and purple drank, he kept his playfulness alive. But after the initial sample, ‘Blue World’ pulls a U-turn and speeds off at a machine-gun pace with the same boastful optimism of the earliest Mac Miller records. But then there’s ‘Blue World’ which, you would assume, shares the depression that the track which it samples ‘It’s a Blue World’ pours all over itself in melancholy jazz harmony. The songs paint the same picture on tracks like ‘Complicated’, we find him asking for simplicity and frustrated that life doesn’t cooperate. The other has him upright, eyes open, hand in a fist and gazing straight out of the cover like he’s ready to get going. One has him with his eyes closed, head resting in one hand in a Buster Keaton slump, looking tired and dejected. The album cover itself has two photos of Mac superimposed. What does Circles sound like? For me it lies midway between fed-up and hopeful. You have to cut through the fog to see the sound underneath. An army of pundits, keyboard tappers, and music gurus have their interpretations and told-you-sos, to the point where Mac’s personal legend obscures his music like a fog hanging on the water. Even the most innocent breaths and sighs suddenly prophesise the overdose of fentanyl that killed him. Inevitably the lyrics take on new gravity. It’s not as creepy as the zombie albums of Jimi Hendrix that appear 40+ years after his family buried him but Mac’s death, or more accurately his life, still hangs over the music and change how it sounds. Mac Miller died over a year ago now and the label has released his only posthumous album Circles. You look away and the light hangs in front of your eyes for those short seconds, not quite real, and yet not quite finished. Listening to music released posthumously has the same ghostly quality as the red spots left in your vision by a bright light. ![]() Print Music Editor Richard Ainslie reviews Mac Miller’s posthumous album following its release ![]()
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