And so he continues to write another one and another one until we're convinced.Like the days of Steely Dan or Harry Nilsson releasing a classic album every year (or less) comes Mac DeMarco's Another One, a Mini-LP announced one year after the release of the meteorically successful Salad Days. I know I'm special, he sings, but I want you to be a part of it, too. Chris Martin says the stars shine for his lover DeMarco says they call for him, only he'd rather stay with his woman. When I saw him at this year's Primavera Sound Festival, his band dropped in a few minutes of Coldplay's "Yellow"-the joke, of course, being that "Yellow" is fairly close to a song that DeMarco would've written. He’s what sex columnist Dan Savage refers to as "GGG": good, giving, and game. The wink of the album's title turns introspective on the title track, with a deeply languid DeMarco ruminating about the uncertainty of his relationship while wondering if "another one" is knocking at the door of his beloved.ĭeMarco is an unusually sensitive songwriter, capable of ferreting out what someone else might be feeling even as he’s absorbed in his own perspective. "Just to Put Me Down" has a future as an extended set closer, with the refrain of the song title warping ever so slowly as he sings it over and over again, his guitar bursting into peals of expression. The twinkling chord progression on "Without Me"-amongst his prettiest songs ever recorded-is buttressed by a cloud of washed out synthesizers, creating a lovesick feeling as he sings about accepting that a woman is better without him. Few will sound as comely or as inviting as DeMarco does on "No Other Heart" when he sings, "Come on and give this lover boy a try/ I'll put the sparkle right back in your eyes/ What could you lose?" The solo in "The Way You Love Her" was written with Robbie Robertson's strictured tone in mind, even as it ends up a few steps closer to the nu-reggae swing of Magic!'s "Rude". There are four slow songs and three songs that are a little less slow but still plenty relaxed, all of them filled with little details to catch your ear. It riffs on his established formula: the same rinky-dink guitar tone, funky basslines, air-tight percussion announcing a band with enough experience to avoid fucking up the vibe. It's like a novella, or a made-for-TV movie-something to chew on while we wait for the next major project. Which means: If you like DeMarco, you'll like Another One. This type of sincerity without precocity is rare in art, and the contrast between the content of DeMarco's music and the content of his character only highlights his singularity as someone whose contradictions build toward a vibrant self, rather than collapsing in disarray. Music made for the end of a rooftop barbecue, when the sun dips, the beer is nearly gone, and everyone who doesn't want to be there has already gone. Here, you can be honest, goofy, even silent all of it is accepted without a dissenting word. They're for the unguarded moments you might share with another person where the both of you are comfortable without reservation. His music isn't for situations that are laidback in and of themselves. He connects not simply because he's "chill," but because his relaxed self seems borne of extreme self-confidence. At first sight, DeMarco seems impossibly "chill," that meditative state achieved by studying Buddhism or popping a few Oxys, only it’s more complicated than that.
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