CD: Housed in a 4-panel digipak. Includes full-color poster-style insert with lyrics.
LP: Black vinyl inside a sleeve with printed lyrics, housed in a heavyweight jacket. Includes 24” × 36” foldout poster and digital download.
Peak Vinyl: Pressed on limited-edition clear vinyl. Includes 24” × 36” foldout poster and digital download.
Power Chords can also be found at your local record store.
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Power Chords, Mike Krol’s new Merge release, picks up where 2015’s Turkey left off. It traces Krol’s journey back to punk rock, harnessing both the guitar technique and the musical redemption referenced in its title. He’s wielding the same influences—Misfits, The Strokes, early Weezer, Ramones—but turning up the gravity and the gain. Indeed, Krol has gone somewhere new; yes, he bludgeoned himself with over-analysis and self-loathing, but along the way he stumbled upon a trove of intricate guitar lines and artfully mutating melodies.
Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record—painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.
