Mikal Cronin headlined Friday night at Comet Ping Pong. (Photo by jlgriffiths)

Mikal Cronin has always been more of a sidekick than a bonafide superhero. The Robin to Ty Segall‘s Batman, Cronin has spent the past few years kicking around the middle card of perennial garage rock festival line-ups and sharing the road with his Bay Area bestie. But after Friday night’s performance at Comet Ping Pong, it appears that Cronin is ready to don a cape and cowl of his own. You know, if he’s into that sort of thing on stage.

After quietly releasing one of 2011’s best albums, Cronin has a new label (Merge) and an excellent sophomore release that finds the 27-year-old gracefully towing the line between “power” and “pop”. On MCII, Cronin lets his AAA Radio flourishes fight it out with his more rocking numbers to great effect but when playing live his music sits firmly in the power category, reworking certain songs to fit the setting.

Songs like “Weight” and “Change” had their softer touches—piano in the former, strings in the latter—reworked with punchy guitar and bass fills while studio standouts (and distortion pedal happy tunes) “Shout It Out” and “Apathy” still managed to provide that endorphin-fueled haze that makes his music such a joy to hear.

Those that came for the lighter, more palatable songs from Shannon & The Clams and Cronin were in for an awakening with Baltimore’s Roomrunner. While Cronin and Shannon & The Clams balance the plaintive ballad with the full throated rocker, Roomrunner sits firmly in the “Oh sweet Jesus, this is loud and I’m going to hate myself for standing this close to the stage tomorrow” camp. The Bleach-era Nirvana channeling quartet played a head-splittingly loud set to kick the night that featured a lot of cuts from their full-length debut Ideal Cities.