Well, damn. Tomorrow, it’ll be nine years to the day that Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days was released. Nine years in two more days if you’re reading from the US. And it’ll be pretty much nine years since I’ve been listening to Mac as an artist, waiting in anticipation for each release that followed. Look at this little post I did when I got the idea to write about how much I was enjoying the record. 19 years of age and wasn’t bothered about proofreading what I was writing. Not much has changed on that front. But the album really was on constant rotation at the time, and it’s probably my favourite of DeMarco’s to this day.

If you did click on that link that goes to that post from 9 years ago, you’ll see the short origin story of how I came across the album. It doesn’t bear repeating. But the gist is its Best New Music review on Pitchfork and hearing minute-and-a-half samples on iTunes. If you also look at the date of that post, I wrote it and got it out there on 24th May, the day after the strange music video (above) for DeMarco’s ‘Passing Out Pieces’ was finally released, five months after it had already been out as a single. By May, the song was a firm favourite of mine. Didn’t think the video matched its tone at all, though.

It opens up the album’s second half with these phat but glossy synthesizers, one playing the melodic hook on the left side and another providing the chords on the right, a thick bass mirroring the left-hand-side synthesizer melody and a steady-going drum pattern. The track concerns DeMarco’s feelings of being this musician man who’s never been hesitant to devote time to his followers whether or not it comes at the price of making a fool of himself in the process. He understands that its the price you have to pay in the business that is music, but admits that the stuff he’s done that he couldn’t never tell his mother has a bit of burden on him. He’s seen some scary stuff. But he closes the song out with a growly “Yeah” as if to say, “You gotta love it, though.” The song’s a jam. Always a good time whenever this pops up on shuffle. Yeah, it’s getting to a decade. But it’s sounds super-fresh, still.