Salad Days
| Mac Demarco
Salad Days
Salad Days is the second full-length studio album by Canadian musician Mac DeMarco released on April 1, 2014 through Captured Tracks. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Mac DeMarco's second full-length isn’t a departure from its predecessor so much as a richer, increasingly assured refinement.
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Consequence of Sound
With regards to his self-labeled “jizz jazz” genre, consider this his magnum opus.
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NME
The Canadian slacker takes a turn for the melancholy on his best album to date.
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Rolling Stone
Salad Days is packed with wry, knowing lyrics and washed-out vocals.
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The Guardian
It's hard to tell if Mac DeMarco is a merry prankster or a tortured soul, but either way, his third album is likely to keep winning him new fans.
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The Know
“Salad Days” extends DeMarco’s pensive songwriting streak.
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Gigslutz
This album won’t be a mass chart success, winning awards and breaking records here and there, but it is a sincere album that is sure to further endear DeMarco to his cult following.
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Paste Magazine
It’s rebel music for people with nothing really to stand for, a call to arms for simply the state of being young.
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Something You Said
I don’t think Mac could do wrong in the starry eyes of his near cult-like following – but there’s no mistaking, he does make damn fine records.
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All Music
With more memorable tracks and a slightly more accessible feel, the album is less distracted and more tuneful than before without losing any of the freewheeling spirit that made his songs and persona so attractive in the first place
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Velocities in Music
DeMarco’s talent lies in songwriting, particularly when it comes to writing absolutely brilliant guitar hooks. Almost every track on this record features guitar melodies that seem to just melt into your brain.
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KEXP
DeMarco is embracing the future with more than a little hesitation. But in his own unique way, Mac DeMarco helps us remember that time and time again, the kids pull through, however unorthodox their methods may be.
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SPIN
Mac DeMarco is the Slacker With a Heart of Gold on the Endearing ‘Salad Days’.
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Medium
Mac Demarco’s Salad Days is many, unalike things. But it’s not a contradiction.
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Sputnik Music
Introspection with melody.
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Sputnik Music
Excellent.
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HS Insider
Lay back chill and hear the soothing mellow sounds of Mac DeMarco’s songs.
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NPR
A thematically tight, formally slender album full of sun-dappled songs about frittering youth away and being mostly okay with it.
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Music Feeds
Sincerity and maturity almost makes Salad Days sound like a self-addressed letter, chronicling life experiences after moments of self-realisation.
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KUMD
Salad Days is another solid release from Demarco.
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34st
“Salad Days” is Mac’s best album yet.
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Spectrum Culture
Salad Days confirms DeMarco’s gifts for winning melody.
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IMPOSE
He is an outsider and too young to care about posterity, of that he's somewhat sure. Yet we inherit these pedestals whether we want them or not.
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The Musical Hype
Salad Days is exceptional.
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Layers & Sounds
So many incredible songs, so many tracks different from each other yet sliding together seamlessly.
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Golden Plec
Mac’s music is often as colourful as an Adventure Time episode, and with most shows like this, they’re built on repetition.
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The Fire Note
There isn’t a song less than great on Salad Days!
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Music OMH
Mac DeMarco is a cool dude.
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KSPC Radio
Mac’s a good dude.
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TimeOut
He still sounds like he’s fronting a drunk cruise ship band playing their last set of the night, but the easy, relaxed ennui of his last two records is gone, replaced with a weary drawl and some depressing road stories.
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UNF Spinnaker
His newer songs exemplify an easy-going, carefree lifestyle—but still, they contain depth and an insight to DeMarco’s life with sarcastic lyrics.
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The National Student
With Salad Days, DeMarco is back and better than ever, his sophomore full length album is incredibly produced, beautifully intricate, and full of lovely little surprises.
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SYN Media
Some will herald Salad Days as a more mature Mac DeMarco, which may very well be true. Whether or not this is a compliment or a critique is more uncertain as much of the charm of his previous releases – in particular sophomore record, 2 – was consequent of the seemingly immature persona DeMarco embodied. Most likely, the answer lies somewhere in between.
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The Local Joke
Unlike 2 and to also quote to the contrary of George Costanza, it’s an album about something. Which is saying a helluva lot more when your name is Mac Demarco. Salad Days forever.
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Anhedonic Headphones
It’s just one more album released in 2014 in a long string of albums that are sure popular with somebody, but are excruciatingly boring and easily forgettable.
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Pop Press International
If the salad days are truly behind him, it was a wild ride, and we’ll all just have to revel in what is currently the most talented and successful mid-midlife crisis to date.
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The Aggie
DeMarco has so much more to offer than simply the slacker aesthetic he has so far been labelled with. I give this album an 8 out of 10. May his Salad Days continue.
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The Cardinal Times
Though higher expectations and a growing fan base are resulting from his music’s new maturity, I wouldn’t expect DeMarco himself to grow up too fast.
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Clash Magazine
Ultimately, ‘Salad Days’ is an aural testament to the old adage that there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.
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The Echo
If you’ll let it, it can help you drift off into the space of your mind. How far you want to go is up to you, and that’s cool with Mac.
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Woodcock Media
Salad Days – the third and most recent album from Canada’s strangely cool Mac DeMarco – is a smoothly refreshing, twangy twist on his ever-evolving indie rock sound.
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Pretty Much Amazing
This is someone different. Someone who, if only minutely, understands that sometimes, you can win by losing. A drumstick up the ass might be funny, but it pales in comparison to the hilarity of life at its most unforgiving.
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Yack! Magazine
Mac‘s self proclaimed ‘Jizz Jazz’ style possesses such easy-listening qualities that every-and-anybody would enjoy his whole back catalogue.
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Puluche
Mac DeMarco will be there with a cigarette, a grin, and a joke or two to help you feel a little less lonesome.
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Earbuddy
Salad Days cements Mac DeMarco as one of this generation's most charming singer-songwriters.
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Smash Cut Reviews
Salad Days is best enjoyed on the porch on a clear summer day, where your only worry in the world is whether or not your cigarette ashes will fall into your Miller High Life.
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Electronic Beats
This ambivalence, swaying between severity and silliness, is Mac’s leitmotif on Salad Days—and will ultimately become his credo. ~
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Ride the Tempo
In Salad Days DeMarco contemplates fame, but it’s honest and we can be guaranteed that even as his fan base continues to grow, we’ll be getting the same Mac DeMarco. The one who looks like he just rolled out of a dorm room or off a tractor.
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The Exeter Daily
An effortlessly lazy third album from tousled Canadian blue-waver DeMarco, Salad Days sees a daydreaming melange of lulling guitars glazed with Sunday morning vocals delivered through a hungover smile.
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Soundblab
Mac DeMarco plays a sort of laid-back, jangly, lo-fi slacker style of music on Salad Days, and for the most part it works well.
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Under the Radar Mag
Salad Days allows a darker and more insightful side to emerge from behind those upbeat rhythms and gap-toothed smiles; 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.
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The Navigator
The aptly-named Salad Days is a reflection of the emotional, hopeful, and somewhat juvenile era that dominated Demarco’s last release, 2.
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Under the Radar Mag
You can bet that Mac won’t be wearing a quivery lip for long, and neither, judging by the consistent and even mature output he seems to be capable of delivering, will his listeners.
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List
New-found smoothness to 80s and 90s college rock sound from young Canadian songwriter.
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The Waster
Salad Days is quite a timeless piece – drawing on past relics, while introspectively looking forward into the vast future.
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WIUX
It’s the kind of music that’s made for hanging out in your hammock to while the sun beats down and the breeze blows, and ever since his debut EP, the glam-rock flavored Rock and Roll Nightclub, DeMarco’s sound has only gotten looser and more laid back.
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Buffablog
Salad Days is an absolute delight to listen to. It is stacked with assured, gorgeous pop songs infused with the good nature and humor that Mac has become known for.
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The Quirky Quibbler
Salad Days is the perfect representation of youth: having all the time and energy required to make quality content, but simply lacking the necessary funds. Nevertheless, the lo-fi recording doesn’t hinder Mac Demarco from producing some of the catchiest and most serene music of 2014.
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No More Workhouse
He’s an artist I expect to last, someone that seems to love what he does and the world seems to be slowly sitting up to take notice.
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No Ripcord
Salad Days is a testament to love at its most selfless and pure as much as it is the fear of holding on to it.
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Quip Magazine
DeMarco expresses the parts of himself that weren’t in plain sight before in Salad Days, a mixture of sober reflections and good advice that wash things off fresh for a new slate.
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The Monitors
Salad Days comes after months of Mac DeMarco developing into something more than a joker with a trick up his sleeve and an ironic medley to end his set with.
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The Scope
With Salad Days, DeMarco has brought us another album pulsing with clear-toned guitar riffs that slip out of the speakers, drums that keep time with your pulse and a voice that sounds like he's singing to you from inside your own ear.
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We Plug Good Music
Salad Days shows that Demarco does actually want to be taken seriously as an artist, even if his public attitude seems otherwise. When he’s making music this good, maturity is surely underrated.
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The Thin Air
Salad Days only adds to the Mac DeMarco genre tag adventure.
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The Union
The songs all consistently feature simpler guitar rock as Demarco hones in on his vocal fluctuations.
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Exclaim!
Salad Days shows there's plenty of tenderness behind that shit-eating, gap-toothed grin.
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RHS Today
DeMarco lures people in with his relaxed, cigarette smoke warped tunes and hooks them with his loveable boyish charm.
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The Saint Online
It showcases the still fun-loving, still charismatic, and still brilliantly entertaining Mac DeMarco that we know and love.
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NOW Toronto
Of course even DeMarco's most dispirited lyrics still come across as gently wafting, innocuous observations once you've been lulled by the music.
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WHUS Radio
Overall, this album is a fun, easy-going blast of fun that anyone could get into.
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Alden's Album Review
As a Folk album, this is quite an amazing record as only few songs can be considered like boring like the other Folk albums previously released by other artists, bands, and groups.
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The Niche Cache
Mac DeMarco’s ‘Salad Days’ may be over, but his Glory Days are yet to come.
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Tampa Bay
Mac DeMarco's 'Salad Days' an early Christmas present.
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Bearded Gentlemen Music
Everything is hazy, reflective, and ultimately kind of the same although I wonder if these will sound better when played live.
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The Inquirer
Mac DeMarco gets it right a third time.
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Baeble Music
The beloved buck-toothed Canadian's new album Salad Days is one long surreal ride through a glossy barrel, chock full of beachy riffs and floaty absent minded vocals, that could be the soundtrack for Endless Summer III.
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Music Under the Microscope
I have an overly biased opinion of this album I feel, as I really dig Mac DeMarco, but I don't really have any complaints. Production is very solid on this album, and it is a great listen from back to front.
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Alt Citizen
If Salad Days is any indication of DeMarco welcoming some real responsibility, then his audience is sure in for a treat as he continues to figure it all out.
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Tunes and Vibes
I feel this album represents Mac DeMarco stepping in the right direction. He’s evolved into one of the more interesting song writers today and it is my wish to see him perform live one day.
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Far Out Magazine
In short, it seems DeMarco has matured somewhat in the two years between records, something which can probably be attributed to the incessant touring experienced by he and his band-mates off the back of ‘2’.
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