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photo from mac demarco’s facebook page
My dad recently texted me to tell me he was getting into Mac DeMarco and I freaked the fuck out.
I started typing a response: “YOU CAN’T LIKE HIM, DAD, HE PULLS HIS DICK OUT ON STAGE.” I stopped and deleted it, because my dad, of course, had no clue about the weird little persona DeMarco has. He likes his music for his music. Which was separate from his actions. And damn, why am I still talking about the dick thing? Am I one of those people? Those people meaning the people who seem to be so fascinated by Mac DeMarco’s on-stage antics—which, I would assume, on some sub-conscious level, is DeMarco’s intention.
From that fascination stems the questionable way people talk about DeMarco’s music: in relation to his personality. It’s doing DeMarco a disservice to keep fixating on that (and his “mischievous, gap-toothed grin” or whatever it is that people keep saying about his dental sitch).
Stage-persona DeMarco is just a little rambunctious. He’s a little punk. He’s got a devil-may-care attitude that will inevitably remind all of us of the friend we had growing up who managed to age into maturity without dying in some absurd-yet-tragic accident, despite everyone’s expectations. Maybe that accessibility and familiarity in his stage personality is compelling.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Night Club, 2, and now the newest, Salad Days, are all albums that deserve to be judged in their own right as music, not as, “Oh, how surprising that a little shithead could produce something so mature!” The music DeMarco has produced is an entirely separate entity from his persona.
And DeMarco knows it.
“Neither is true or false. Different circumstances bring out different things,” DeMarco says. “I think it’s useful to keep people a little confused.”
Kudos, ‘cause he’s doing that, although it doesn’t really matter. Salad Days is poised to be a success regardless of how people talk about it, ‘cause they’re gonna hear it all the same.
Two years after his last album, 2, DeMarco is nonchalant about the writing and recording process for Salad Days. “It was nice. I usually don’t get very much time for myself, so it’s definitely nice to lock myself up for a month like that,” DeMarco says. Still, it wasn’t a total breeze—the process for writing and recording Salad Days also had its hiccups. DeMarco had said, before embarking on the Salad Days process, that he had lost sight of the fun in making music. Happily, he stumbled back into it.
“Yeah, by the end of recording I was [able to enjoy it]. It took a long time, though and I became frustrated a lot. It was worth it once I worked through it.” DeMarco also points out the difference for him, personally, between touring and songwriting. “They’re two very different things for me. I feel more like a musician in the studio, and touring is more of some kind of spectacle thing. I do enjoy both, though. It’s very important to find a balance.”
He’s struck the balance, and the work was worth it. Salad Days is recognizably DeMarco in its subdued, sleepy rock. Guitar lines induce visions of warm yellow, tropics, and lounging on someone’s front porch, while DeMarco’s sweet, mellowed vocals roll out lazily.
That idea of familiarity in DeMarco’s front is something that informs the new album, though. At just over half an hour, the entire listening experience of Salad Days feels like smoking a fat joint with friends on a hot afternoon in July, picking at dead grass and feeling the sweat bead in the backs of your knees and the crooks of your elbows. DeMarco even describes his own sound as “jizz jazz.”
Even so, there’s a level of introspection present in Salad Days moreso than in his former efforts, squashing the idea that he’s totally carefree. For example, he names “Chamber of Reflection” as his personal favorite track on the new album which, unsurprising considering the name, is chock-full of self-reflection. With lyrics like, “No use looking out, it’s within that brings out lonely feelings,” it shows growth in term’s of DeMarco’s self-awareness and self-reflection.
“The content is a little more personal than I’ve done before, and I feel like I was actually speaking to things that are important to me on this album,” DeMarco says on the new work. “I think I like Salad Days best right now, but that could change. Who knows? I never really hate anything that I put out,” DeMarco says.
Despite the more intimate nature of his new album, DeMarco takes a hands-off approach when it comes to what happens to his music once it leaves the studio. “Once it’s out there [the fans] can do whatever they want with it,” DeMarco says. “I’m not trying to tell people what to do.”
ILLEGALLY BLIND PRESENTS: MAC DEMARCO + AMEN DUNES + JAUN WAUTERS + VUNDABA. MIDDLE EAST DOWNSTAIRS. MON 4.4 AT 8pm/18+/SOLD OUT.