(Disclaimer: I worked at Pitchfork during the time that 2 was released.
The album elevated DeMarco’s profile almost immediately, no doubt due to a Best New Music designation from Pitchfork, one of the last times the publication awarded the honorific to an out-of-nowhere indie-rock artist and subsequently bore a level of responsibility for their success. If you’re a music writer who has survived the entirety of the 2010s, you’ve either spent time rifling through promos, SoundCloud links, and (increasingly) TikTok videos to figure out what people might respond to next, or you’ve safely retreated to jazz-listener status (not judging).īy this measure, the success of 2 took me by surprise, as I’m sure it did many other critics. Part of being a music critic is possessing (or attempting to, anyway) a level of cultural prognostication - a Nostradamus-like ability to predict the next big thing in both mainstream and underground corners of music. His debut release under his own name, the warped and tricky Rock And Roll Night Club EP (which featured refurbished tracks from his Makeout Videotape days), was understandably overlooked upon release in 2012 2 from the same year may as well be considered his true debut at this point, the record that put DeMarco on the map as a baseball-capped vibe-prankster for the Odd Future set.
DeMarco’s not quite there yet, and it’s unclear if he will ever be, but he’s one of the few indie artists from the 2010s who have showed similar and surprising staying power. He is a mascot-like representation of indie’s transformation from left-of-center sonics to unabashed lifestyle music, exuding a viral-friendly silliness and public-facing approachability that’s often betrayed the emotional maturity of his music.Įarlier this week, The Ringer’s Rob Harvilla made a well-argued assertion that Vampire Weekend were perhaps the last indie band to truly break big and survive the buzz that accompanied their initial arrival 11 years ago, making the jump from big-deal indie to big-deal major without sacrificing one iota of their charm. Throughout this decade, the Canadian chill-rock guru has maintained a staying power far past what his scrappy, hissy early work as Makeout Videotape suggested.Īs one of indie’s biggest crossover acts of the 2010s, DeMarco’s appeal is both generational and obvious in a way that even his strongest detractors can recognize.
That’s not a thinly veiled reference to the accidental indie scion’s smoke-‘em-while-you-got-‘em tendencies, representative of a nicotine habit so persistent that one of his earliest buzzmaking songs was a literal love letter to sucking down a particular brand of smoke sticks.
#MAC DEMARCO EARLY JALBUMS MAC#
Admit it: You didn’t expect Mac DeMarco to stick around this long.
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