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.
Though DeMarco certainly hasn’t ditched his slacker aesthetic, Salad Days is nonetheless a strikingly mature achievement for the 23-year-old.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Salad Days isn't the stuff of mainstream success, but it strongly suggests his cult is only going to get bigger.
The lazy melodies, off-kilter vocals and haphazard, plaintive strumming all converge to produce a record of fragmented brilliance.
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.
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.
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.
Salad Days is packed with wry, knowing lyrics and washed-out vocals, like a meeting of Stephen Malkmus and Marc Bolan.
He uses humor and bemused detachment to hint at a deeper pathos he can’t (or won’t) articulate in his oft-beautiful, always slippery songs.
Salad Days loses a lot of the patently ridiculous persona that DeMarco has put so earnestly into his previous releases. In itself, it’s not a terrible loss, because the end result is a high-polish pop album that is more cohesive than any of his older work.
This is art that is confidently immature, and it begs the question: why can’t sophomoric art still be great?
The progression that Salad Days shows is encouraging, even if the album starts to peter out at the end.
It’s a half-baked portrait of a creative personality rung dry and yet still yearning for something new. It’s rare to see an identity crisis like this so early in the career of a promising artist, but DeMarco doesn’t spend time wallowing.
The chord changes aren’t as sharp, the melodies not as direct, the lyrics not as catchy. By the end you almost feel as tired as him. He still has an incredible ear for a melody, it’s just not as fun as it used to be.
Salad Days doesn’t deny that he plays things pretty loose, but there’s an increasing professionalism to his music that undercuts it just a bit.
Please… go easy with my baby… please… go easy…
This is an album that I absolutely adore to death, mostly because of my personal attachment to it. So, this album has been crucial in my life and has gotten me through rough times. I first remember discovering a song from this album during a dark period of my life. During 2020, it was one of the worst times of my life, the whole coronavirus quarantine was happening, my dad got in a devastating near-death car accident ... read more
I should have checked this out a lot sooner, this is awesome!
Last year, I’ve first heard of Mac Demarco from my cousin, who listens to his music all the fucking time. She has an interesting taste in music, and she listens to a lot of people I’m not very fond of (including Felony Shartinez), so it originally turned me off this album for quite a while. Then when I joined AOTY, I saw that this album had quite a lot of praise, and for a long time I’d been telling myself to hear ... read more
Shoutout to @ThePurpleIdiot, thanks for recommending this to me.
Salad Days is the 2nd studio album from Canadian musician Mac DeMarco, released in April 2014. It was recorded in October 2013 at DeMarco's apartment in Brooklyn, New York. It was a critical success, and peaked at No. 30 in the US Billboard 200; it has since been certified gold with 500k copies sold.
Now, I'm not too familiar with DeMarco's music outside of his 2017 song "My Old Man" which is a pretty nice track to sit ... read more
easily his best work everything flows together so nice and some songs are just so majestic
There are few artists that can sound the way Mac has figured out how to sound. His wide array of soundscapes provides a great variety throughout the album and there's really something for everybody on here. If you're trying to get into Mac Demarco, this is undoubtedly the first one you should check out.
1 | Salad Days 2:25 | 89 |
2 | Blue Boy 2:06 | 86 |
3 | Brother 3:32 | 84 |
4 | Let Her Go 3:02 | 85 |
5 | Goodbye Weekend 2:59 | 83 |
6 | Let My Baby Stay 4:08 | 78 |
7 | Passing Out Pieces 2:47 | 88 |
8 | Treat Her Better 3:49 | 84 |
9 | Chamber of Reflection 3:51 | 96 |
10 | Go Easy 3:24 | 83 |
11 | Jonny's Odyssey 2:38 | 79 |
#2 | / | NME |
#5 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#5 | / | FasterLouder |
#5 | / | Slant Magazine |
#9 | / | Rolling Stone |
#11 | / | The Guardian |
#11 | / | Time Out New York |
#11 | / | Under the Radar |
#12 | / | Pitchfork |
#13 | / | Dazed |