Credit: @kugelmama
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Mackin Carroll (he/him) is a punch to the gut and a hug to the heart. Carroll’s eclectic singer-songwriter songs range in subject from things like outer space, to breakfast foods, to utter heartbreak - all sung in a voice that’s both jagged and sweet. Harkening back to the melancholia of 00’s indie artists, Carroll’s songs, drenched in folk and searing with indie rock spirit, are deeply personal and riddled with both offbeat metaphors and illustrious melodies. If his influences were carpooling, Conor Oberst would be driving, Sufjan Stevens would call shotgun, and Jeff Tweedy and Ben Gibbard would be staring out the windows in the back seat, while Ben Folds was tied up in the trunk. Rising from the suburbs, Carroll cut his teeth in garage bands, playing the bass guitar and shouting poetry that he wrote in his bedroom or in the back of math class over scrappy, juvenile jams. These days, Carroll, often clad in a skirt or dress, always catches fire live, shouting and whispering, transcending and connecting. Carroll always brings his music to life at a show and will usually play unreleased songs and improvise new ones on the spot. His debut solo album, “Learning How to Swim”, is a lyrical powerhouse - the culmination of his quest for self knowledge, born out of a year of obsessive recording and personal reflection, refining his sound and bringing his songs of loneliness, garbage, and metaphysics to life in a way that only he could.