He played in a youthful pop-punk band called Prop 84 (his birth year); during a teenage “underground hip-hop phase,” he made beats. Comedy overtook his creative life in college, but he still composed musical snippets for his early digital shorts at “S.N.L.”
On “The Real Me,” he played everything — keys, guitar, electronic drums. “It was really just me, plugging in in my bedroom, and trying to tell these stories that I’ve had inside of me for a long time,” he said, in a trademark deadpan.
Eventually, he shared his lo-fi compositions with his friend Peanut Butter Wolf, the D.J. and producer, who released the album on his indie label, Stone’s Throw Records. They did not rerecord anything: “What you hear is what I gave,” Mooney said.
The 11 tracks, totaling 19 minutes, encompass many genres, at least in theory. There’s “Gwendolyn Bartley,” “which some people have said is sort of Beatles-esque,” according to Mooney. “I Gotta Dance Tonight” is a synth-y club non-banger. Mostly the album is him singing sort of tunelessly over gentle strums.
“I feel like I can speak more directly through songs than I can through a comedy sketch or a character,” he said. “A wall is taken down.”
As Kyle M, he never betrayed even a hint of a joke: The album, he insisted, is heartfelt and authentically him. Asked what musical traditions he saw himself a part of, he said, “If anything, I’d hope that I’m in lineage with some of the great musicians through history.”
“I’m saying that,” he added, “while trying to be humble.” He is already working on plans to tour.
