Mk.gee: Two Star & the Dream Police Album Review

Mike Gordon’s mangled mix of pop, rock, and soul sounds like it’s made of scrap metal and polished with sandpaper. Across Two Star & the Dream Police, his magnificent debut album as Mk.gee, the 26-year-old from New Jersey subverts recognizable forms—’80s R&B ballads, Phil Collins-inspired downtempo anthems, Michael Jackson-meets-Arthur Russell pop-rock grooves—with unusual tones, tempos, and textures. His distinctive, distended guitar playing and Prince-indebted singing are pinholed through murky, twitchy mixes that refuse to stay still. Despite the elusive and exploratory nature of his music, Gordon is a master of melody, chiseling gorgeous, richly detailed pop songs from seemingly cluttered compositions. Two Star is as singular as it is familiar, an original and expansive record that feels at once timeless and uncannily contemporary.

Although Gordon’s been releasing EPs and mixtapes since 2017, even landing a track on Frank Ocean’s Blonded Radio, many people first encountered him in 2021 as Dijon’s wiry, wild-haired guitarist. In a live performance of Dijon’s debut album, Absolutely, the pair play off one another in conspiratorial glee, Dijon in his olive fishing vest and Gordon with his ’60s-issue Fender Jaguar, both bounding about a gear-strewn dining room with childlike awe, howling and harmonizing and clapping until they can hardly stand up straight. Before Dijon met Gordon, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter’s brand of guitar-backed R&B was charming but safe, a collection of Blonde-lite songs that didn’t always extend past emulation. Gordon, however, offered Dijon a new rhythmic architecture, and freedom, to channel his gifts. “The real spirit of the record came when I formally met Mike,” Dijon recalled in a 2022 interview. Absolutely marked a significant leap for Dijon’s music, and he credited Gordon as an invaluable catalyst. “I think he might be creating or transmitting from an alien planet,” Dijon said in another interview. “It feels like this is the first music I’ve ever made.”

Dijon appears to have helped Gordon make a similar leap of his own. Before Two Star, Mk.gee’s solo releases sounded like an offshoot of Toro y Moi or Unknown Mortal Orchestra, a pleasant array of sunny side-chained guitars, syncopated drums, and funky basslines. Two Star, though, signals a sea change for Gordon, who abandons easily deciphered mixes and clean song structures for strange, defiant choices that blister with anxiety and longing. Warbly electric guitar, spiraling saxophones, distorted synths, and two-bit toms splinter and scatter; Gordon’s raspy voice sounds as if he were in the next room, singing from a seated position on the floor. This is perhaps Dijon’s most obvious influence; before Two Star, Mk.gee was a tepid vocalist, but here he belts, coos, and moans with soulful, skin-tingling skill. And though the album has no obvious narrative, the oblique songwriting doesn’t detract from Gordon’s raging emotions. He’s desperate to be seen and to see, to stop hiding from the hard stuff and give himself to someone or something else, to embody a sense of self that feels safe and sustainable, at least for a little while.