Mac Demarco
Another One
(Captured Tracks)
The shambling, gap-toothed Canadian rocker Mac Demarco makes what some have called “slacker rock,” and although that’s not a genre you see advertised in music stores, one listen to his fourth studio album confirms that description. Running only 25 minutes, this mini-LP feels less like a record and more like a brief, lackadaisical mood, the aural equivalent of a nap in a hammock on a sun-dappled afternoon.
The eight mellow songs on Another One — each woven with loopy slide guitar riffs, synth-y keyboards, and Demarco’s plaintive murmuring — sound nearly identical, like he’s just teasing out a train of thought and turning it over and over in his mind.
The lyrics speak to love, jealousy, and suspicion — “Though she says she … hasn’t lost your trust/ Who could that be knocking at her door/ Must be another one,” he sings on the title track — but the mood overall is calm, thoughtful, and comfortably spaced-out. No wonder his popularity has grown in recent years among the overworked college crowd.
“The Way You’d Love Her” sounds like a lost Beatles cut circa 1964, with Demarco’s voice — a dead ringer for John Lennon’s — soaked in reverb and paired with a noodling electric guitar solo. Here and there, Demarco changes his tune: echoey ballads like “A Heart Like Hers” make way for some bluesy roadhouse swagger on “Just To Put Me Down” and a jaunty love-me vibe on “I’ve Been Waiting For Her.”
And speaking of The Beatles: the shamelessly cutesy “No Other Heart” sounds like DeMarco’s brightened-up homage to “Yesterday,” with lyrics like, “Give this lover boy a try/ I’ll put the sparkle right back in your eyes” backed by a thin, persistent guitar melody and warm bursts of keyboard.
The album, recorded by Demarco at his home in Queens over a week and a half, won’t stand as his magnum opus. But for a midsummer set of lounge-around songs, Another One is admirably spare, playful, and well-produced. At 25 years old, Demarco is a likeable oddball, and a talented enough artist to evolve significantly over time. For now, though, it’s easy to enjoy slacking off with him.•
