Underneath the craze of Brat summer, New Jersey guitarist, vocalist and producer Mk.gee (pronounced “ma-ghee”) has been the year’s biggest word-of-mouth success after the release of debut album Two Star & the Dream Police (following various other releases dating back to 2017). He’s a woozy pop-soul virtuoso, an 80s historian with an eye for Americana, known for shadowy performance videos where he plays on moving vehicles like some sort of lone train-hopper. Playing to a heaving venue of newfound obsessives with arena rock energy, he provokes mad, delighted screams – from both crowd and artist.
Stylistically, he’s somewhere between Jai Paul and Alex G, and like those artists, he looks up at constellations of classic influences and fires himself somewhere in the middle of them. The drums of How Many Miles or You Got It could just as easily start up a ballad from Celine Dion or Whitney Houston; the live version of Are You Looking Up tunes the guitar and vocal down to reveal the hidden influence of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’. I Want beats like the Police’s Every Breath You Take before exploding into white-hot yearning: “I’m not your hero but I’ve got his desire.”
