5.5/10
Salad Days is the second full-length studio album by Canadian musician Mac DeMarco. Mac mixes elements of the Psychedelic boom of the 60s and today’s trend of softer surf rock into a very unique and special type of Indie sound. Mac displays elements from clear influences that range as far as The Doors and Jimi Hendrix to Jack Johnson and newer Indie and surf pop artists like Rex Orange County. Salad Days is a shorter record that clocks in at only a little over 30 minutes with 11 tracks. The guitars throughout this record are very pleasant and show clear influence from some of the psychedelic sound of the 60s. As a multi-instrumentalist it is clear that DeMarco has a great sense of musicianship and music theory and knew exactly the direction he wanted to go with the strings on this record, and it’s executed pretty damn flawlessly. The drawn out, stretched, riffs really make the sound in a lot of these tracks pop quite nicely. This record really doesn’t seem like anything too abstract or off the wall, but it doesn’t need to be. This album is quite enjoyable with its relaxing, laid back, sound at face value. Salad Days could be taken as nothing more than background music and it would still be enjoyable as a catchy album that musters up feelings of happiness and good vibes. However, there are times in this record where DeMarco does tread a little deeper into some concept waters. Like the song “Brother”, where he discusses topics of purpose and monotony, like when he says ; “you’re better off dead when you’re life’s been said from 9 until 5”. This trend of writing at complete face value has seemed to continue with his newer music, however in the future I would love to see Mac DeMarco tread a little further into some concepts or ideas with a little more depth ; but I’m me and not him. He could very well not ever do that and his music would still be the fun, enjoyable, lovable tunes that are only amplified by his public persona, and realistically maybe that’s not such a bad thing.