Simplistic lyrics about suburban boredom and youthful abandon? Tick. Muffled, loudspeaker-style vocals? Tick. Guitar that may as well have been played with a cheesegrater? Tick, tick, tick. There’s a proliferation of “quirky” dudes that make music like this – lo-fi garage-punk that sounds as if it’s been recorded in a tin can and spliced on to cassette tape. But there’s something irresistibly fun about Mike Krol’s, and not just because he’s dressed up like a camp cop on the album cover, replete with a moustache and grasping a chain in his hand. His songs have names like La La La and Piano Shit (a simple but lovely melody interrupted by Krol deadpanning “I didn’t sign up for this shit”). He smothers his elastic power-pop melodies with punishing distortion. And he dedicates one song to being wasted and pricked by cactuses. Krol is hardly a rock’n’roll virtuoso, but he knows how to make carefree music to make you bounce. Sometimes that’s enough.
