Tag Archives: salad days

#1152: Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

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Mac DeMarco’s Salad Days turned 10 this year. Back when music release dates were on Mondays (or Tuesdays in the US), it was released on March 31st or April Fools’ Day 2014 depending on where you lived. I was in my first year of uni, checking out Pitchfork on my old laptop. The album got the Best New Music mark. I listened. My following of the dude started right there. I was hooked. So much so that I even dedicated a post to it on here. Check out the writing of the 19-year-old I was. Had so much to learn. Now I’m six years older than DeMarco was when the album originally came out, and I find myself relating more and more to the lyrics as the time passes.

Although my previously linked article of my initial impressions of the album may be underwritten and not so substantial, the points I make on there still hold up. The album is indeed ‘sweet’, the eleven tracks on there are ‘enjoyable’ and I still really like the guitar tone on there to this day. The record is most definitely my favourite of DeMarco’s. The melodies are on point. Each tracks flows by like a breeze. And the whole package begins with its title track, a good old existential crisis indie song in which Mac sings about potentially having passed his peak in life but also telling himself to get over it and try again for another year like all the rest of us have to. Quite a melancholy way to start things off. But it’s real, it’s a universal feeling and the deliver of it makes it easy to digest. A very fine combination.

Seems appropriate that this song will be the last representative of the album in this whole series. Finishing off where my Mac DeMarco discovery began and all that. There are still more songs of his to come though, so stay tuned if you’re really looking forward to them. I would have written about a couple other tracks from Salad Days had the stars aligned. ‘Blue Boy’ was an instant favourite on the first listen. ‘Brother’ took some time, but I eventually got ’round to it. I noted ‘Chamber of Reflection’ as a highlight in that old, old post, but I sort of fell out with it quite quickly actually. Think I just found it to be a drag. That’s just me. But all in all, this album means a lot to me, no doubts there.

#1018: Mac DeMarco – Passing Out Pieces

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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.

#730: Mac DeMarco – Let Her Go

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I think I’m now older than Mac DeMarco was when he released Salad Days in 2014. I was in my first year of university, 18 but very close to 19, looking for new music to hear and DeMarco appeared with a Best New Music tag on Pitchfork. This is a story I’ve told many times before on this blog. To cut it short, I liked the album pretty much instantly. I still think it’s his best one to this day. This blog was well under way by the time he released the record, so songs like ‘Blue Boy’ and ‘Brother’ I wasn’t able to write about. I did do one for ‘Go Easy’ though, that could be a fun one to read (I don’t know I’ve never really looked back). There will be more to come from this album in the future. But today’s post looks at ‘Let Her Go’, a track that further proved to an eighteen year old me that this was some really good music.

It was the shining guitar tone that grabbed my attention initially when hearing the album for the first time. It was a constant throughout the album, and comes into play especially on this song. ‘Let Her Go’ is the obvious ‘hit’ from Salad Days, carried by a summery ringing descending guitar riff that interplays with the hopping bassline throughout its verses. Despite its upbeat rhythm, DeMarco sings about the hardships of unrequited love. It’s a classic song trope, happy-sounding music with sad lyrics, and I have to say that when carried out well it’s always an add to the music library. I don’t even think back then I realised how sad the song was until I read the lyrics, even though I was ‘singing’ along to them very freely.

Six years on and ‘Let Her Go’ resonates with me just as much as it did back then. I would be lying if I said I haven’t gone through what’s described in the track. Because of that, it probably resonates with me more. I always be a fan of Mac DeMarco, but that Salad Days/Another One era will always be the one I regard as his best.

My iPod #437: Mac DeMarco – Go Easy

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Salad Days, the second album by Canadian goofball musician man Mac DeMarco, was easily one of my favourite albums of last year. I wrote a separate post dedicated to how much I was enjoying it at the time. If you’re in a hurry and can’t read it, I basically said the melodies were great, every song is memorable, the sound he gets on his guitar is a thing of gleaming beauty, and the album’s overall chill and casual vibe makes for some very easy listening. I certainly became a DeMarco fan thanks to it and I hope to see him, God willing, in Manchester in the summer when he plays at the Parklife Festival.

“Go Easy” is the last ‘song’ on the album, in that it is the last one in which Mac actually sings in before the album’s closing instrumental track “Jonny’s Odyssey”. It carries on the trend established by the nine tracks before it of consisting of a steady beat bathed with DeMarco’s shiny guitar licks and fills. The track also concerns DeMarco’s feelings on the pressures of his girlfriend moving to a new place, a subject which is also referred to in other songs on the album. And again, like almost all of the other tracks, it follows the simple structure of a verse, a chorus, a verse and a few reiterations of the chorus before it comes to a close. May not sound very interesting, but you have to hear it order to believe for yourself. Salad Days is too good to miss out on.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

Another album I’m liking at the mo: Mac DeMarco – Salad Days

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All it took were listens to the minute and a half samples on iTunes, and I knew it was something I had to hear fully.

Always on the look out for new music to listen to, I saw the 8.5 rating and the review for “Salad Days” on Pitchfork again. Can’t really remember what it said, but I thought ‘what the hell, might as well listen to it’. That was a good decision.

“Salad Days” is a sweet album, only half an hour long, filled with eleven enjoyable tracks (or ten discarding the instrumental “Jonny’s Odyssey”) that which are easy to digest and sound very pleasant to the ear. Sometimes when things get a bit rough in life, you need that thing to calm you down. If you’re feeling as if you’re getting to old and life is passing right by you, that is addressed in the very first track. It might be an album for you.

Apart from the relatable subject matter, this album is filled with one of the best sounding guitars I can remember hearing. Every note plucked has a shine to it – it’s quite hard to describe but it certainly makes the listening experience that bit more delightful.

I didn’t listen to any of DeMarco’s older material, but after this… I may just do that.

Track picks: Salad Days, Blue Boy, Let Her Go, Passing Out Pieces, Chamber of Reflection