Review: Mac Miller posthumous album is heartbreakingly full

Mac Miller, “Circles” “Why does everybody need me to stay?” Mac Miller asks on the first single from his latest release. He answered his own question with the superb posthumous “Circles.” Miller’s 12-track album is heartbreakingly sublime, a portrait of a wry and honest musician acknowledging his demons but looking past them. Miller died of an accidental drug overdose in 2018 at 26 and was working on “Circles” as a sort of companion album to his Grammy-nominated “Swimming.” Producer Jon Brion, who worked on “Swimming” and also produced for Kanye West and Dido, was asked to finish Miller’s work. Miller’s evocative voice even tries at a tender falsetto in “Surf,” with the optimistic lines: “Until we get old/There’s water in the flowers/Let’s grow.” That he didn’t get a chance to grow himself is a tragedy that this album only somewhat alleviates.