Mac Miller review, Circles: Posthumous album reflects an artist at his creative peak

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy “Everybody’s gonna live,” Mac Miller sings on his posthumous album, Circles, as though he can barely summon the energy to say the words. “Everybody’s gonna die.” The Pittsburgh rapper, whose natural charisma and prolific output earnt him a cult fanbase, was working on what was meant as a companion record to 2018’s Swimming when he died of an accidental overdose, aged 26. Circles opens on the sun-dappled title track, electric guitar thrumming on a see-saw hook under Miller’s hoarse mumble: “This is what it look like/ Right before you fall/ Stumblin’ around you’ve been guessin’ your direction/ Next stop you can’t see at all.” There’s plenty of whimsy on “Complicated”, as Miller sings of cloudy skies over synths loaded with psychedelic fuzz; on the cheerfully glum “Good News”, meanwhile, he sharpens his teeth to recall the mordant bite of Randy Newman. Miller was an avid Beatles fan – you hear it on the waltzing piano of “That’s On Me”.