Tonight Out of the Blue Too Gallery will be hosting Los Angeles’s Mike Krol, a master of Bandcamp bedroom lo-fi who’s built his reputation on fast-paced odes to suburban heartbreak. Clocking in at 18 minutes, Mike Krol’s newest release, Turkey, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blitz of one fast-paced track after another, each more charming than the last. The album marks his departure from his cozy communities in Wisconsin and Connecticut to the sprawling, sweaty scene in Los Angeles. Despite the geographical shift that preceded Turkey’s release, the album falls more in line with his first LP, I Hate Jazz, than it does with his second, Trust Fund. I Hate Jazz, released in 2011, is full to the brim with post-break-up pleas and homages to teenage love; he promises “I’ll always be age seventeen” and tells tales of stealing his mom’s red minivan.  Turkey finds Krol in a moment of alienation from his surroundings, but still features the same lovelorn charm that set his debut release apart. He lets slip “I feel left out of every scene and city I belong to” in “Left Out (ATTN: SoCal Garage Rockers)” but balances such confessions with power-pop melodies and genuine introspection. The album still takes time to stress the importance of being authentic, and celebrating and exploring unfiltered emotions with lines like “Isn’t anger just a form of jealousy?”

Turkey is an exercise in coming back to his roots–that is, returning to his bedroom-rock edge, but this time in a recording studio while signed to a major label. Krol says he felt like he was “trying too hard” with Trust Fund–easily his glossiest, most meticulously produced album–and that with Turkey he wanted to harken back to the days when music was a more personal endeavor. “I wrote the songs in my bedroom for myself,” he says. “And I wanted to get back to that sound with this new record.” According to him, having people listen to his music was certainly a perk, but the opinions of others were secondary. In keeping with that authenticity, Turkey, his first release on Merge Records, celebrates its blemishes instead of concealing them. He keeps his insecurities front and center. He mumbles at the tail end of the album’s last track, “Yeah, I don’t know, man. I didn’t sign up for this shit,” a comment that comes across not as despondent, but instead confessional and genuine.

The past month has marked his first tour across the west coast instead of his usual jaunts through the midwest and parts of the east coast. Krol says that now that he’s inundated with more public performances than ever, he’s adjusting to finding his stage presence and dealing with deceptively difficult tasks, like mastering the art of playing guitar and singing at the same time. Krol was primarily a drummer back in his days of self-recording, and now that he finds himself a front man, he’s having fun adapting to the role and exploring new territory with live performance. Based on his sets so far, it’s apparent that Krol has risen to the occasion.

Turkey is available now via Merge Records. Be sure to catch Mike tonight at Out of the Blue Too tonight at 8pm in Somerville, presented by Illegally Blind. Peruse the rest of his tour dates below, and if you need any further convincing, peep this snippet of a recent show he played in Minneapolis on Sept. 10.

TOUR DATES

Oct 01 Out of the Blue Too Gallery – Somerville, MA

Oct 02 Casa Del Popolo – Montreal, QC

Oct 03 House of Targ – Ottawa, Canada

Oct 04 The Drake Hotel – Toronto, Canada

Oct 05 Majestic Cafe – Detroit, MI

Oct 07 Empty Bottle – Chicago, IL

Oct 26 Boileroom – Guildford, United Kingdom

Oct 28 The Eagle Inn – Salford, United Kingdom

Oct 29 Shacklewell Arms – London, United Kingdom

Oct 30 DOORNROOSJE – Nijmegen, Netherlands

Nov 08 Molotow – Hamburg, Germany

Nov 09 Monarch – Berlin, Germany