For all its internal contradictions, Salad Days is no more or less than a great album in a tradition of no-big-deal great albums. His second full-length, Salad Days, isn’t a departure from its predecessor so much as a richer, increasingly assured refinement.
Whichever Mac is the better-behaved one has been taking over more and more, as the creepy detours of 2012’s Rock and Roll Night Club EP gave way to the more direct 2.
The fact DeMarco isn’t even his real name-he was born Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV-captures the duality almost too perfectly. You can’t read about him without seeing the word “slacker,” but in two short years, he’s gone from opening at New York’s 550-capacity Bowery Ballroom to headlining at the 1,500-capacity Webster Hall (could he have done better if he’d tried?). He’s the guy everybody assumes is a stoner, though he claims he never, as they say, touches the stuff. He’s the gap-toothed prankster who sings the sighing love ballad. This alluring ambivalence is one of DeMarco’s defining traits. Somewhere in retirement, Joe Camel must be kicking himself. “Viceroy” is about taking pleasure in something that could kill you, and the lethal paradox is part of the draw. It’s probably the Brooklyn-via-Montreal singer and songwriter’s best-known tune-a laid-back guitar-pop daydream, as wobbly and welcoming as a backyard hammock-and it captures a lot of his music’s appeal. “Ode to Viceroy”, Mac DeMarco’s sun-dappled tribute to cheap cigs from his 2012 album 2, hasn’t lost its smolder.
0 kommentar(er)
