LP
Captured Tracks – CT-193 (2014) US
“As I’m getting older, chip up on my shoulder...” is the opening line from Mac DeMarco’s second full-length LP ‘Salad Days,’ the follow up to 2012’s lauded Mac DeMarco 2. Amongst that familiar croon and lilting guitar, that initial line from the title track sets the tone for an LP of a maturing singer/songwriter/producer. Someone strangely self-aware of the positives and negatives of their current situation at the ripe old age of 23.
Written and recorded around a relentless tour schedule (which picked up all over again as soon as the LP was done), Salad Days gives the listener a very personal insight into what it’s all about to be Mac amidst the craziness of a rising career in a very public format.
Still, this is musically, lyrically and melodically good old Mac DeMarco, through and through. The same crisp John Lennon / Phil Spector era homegrown lush production that could have walked out of Geoff Emerick’s mixing board in 1972, but with that peculiar Mac touch that’s completely of right now.
We’re only at Part 2 and 1/2 (one EP and two LP’s in) into Mac’s career. A relentless work ethic is something to be admired in today’s indie music scene, but when it’s of the quality Mac is giving us time and time again, it starts to turn from admiration to awe.