The guitar sounds throughout Salad Days are pristine, the lyrics sublime and the vocals… the Lennon-isms are often befuddling but they can only be applauded.

With songs touching on themes of maturation, life in the public eye, and good old-fashioned romance, DeMarco has trimmed the fat both musically and conceptually on Salad Days, turning in a streamlined picture of his musical development.

Mac DeMarco might be the wild and crazy showman on stage, but Salad Days shows there's plenty of tenderness behind that shit-eating, gap-toothed grin.

Sweet, soulful little man that he is, Mac knows better than to let his bellyaching get in the way of everyone else's good time — instead, he’s simply dialled down the quirk and written his best record yet.

This is an LP combining the pop artist’s unashamed desire to occupy your head all day long and the storyteller’s authenticity, with astounding, electrifying skill.

His second full-length, Salad Days, isn’t a departure from its predecessor so much as a richer, increasingly assured refinement. 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.

The results are a wistful, free-wheeling and intimate snapshot of DeMarco's psyche-an album that is more complex than you might assume, but more rewarding for it.

For all the pomp and circumstance preceding Salad Days, this is still an album that DeMarco recorded in his Brooklyn walkup. It’s a record that boasts glaring maturity without diminishing the iconic immaturity.

The record also proves that maturity does not mean creative death – this is complete album and in many ways his best.

The songs only sound sleeker, more melodic, more intensely stoned. That's DeMarco in sum, and thankfully he's not retreating into his shell just yet.

His patron saints appear to be Harry Nilsson and yacht rockers like 10cc, and rarely are either channeled with this little cheese and this much panache. He merges these influences with what's quickly become his signature guitar sound, an effortless style that can be playfully discordant.

The romantic in De Marco is now very much a presence in his life, far from it being a farce, and adroitly balances those feelings of solitude and intimacy by clasping dearly to the everyday proportions that make his life complete.

The lazy melodies, off-kilter vocals and haphazard, plaintive strumming all converge to produce a record of fragmented brilliance.

Salad Days isn't the stuff of mainstream success, but it strongly suggests his cult is only going to get bigger.