ALBUM REVIEW: Mac DeMarco- 2
Mac DeMarco is a Singer/Songwriter from Montreal who specializes in a form of Jangle Pop. For those who don’t know what Jangle Pop is, it is a genre that focuses on jangly, bright guitars. For the most part, I normally love Jangle Pop. The guitar tone used in a lot of the music is easily one of my favorite instrument sounds (To give other examples of artists that utilize this style, there’s earl R.E.M. and The Smiths). However, Mac DeMarco makes it a bit hard to listen to those guitars.
The chord progression on a lot of these songs are fantastic. The post-chorus strumming on Dreaming is absolutely fantastic. In fact, there’s a lot of moments on this album where the guitar takes the lead and really shows itself off in fine form. In fact, some of the more mediocre songs on the album are made listenable simply with the inclusion of these guitars. Ode To Viceroy is a dreadfully miserable song, until that complex guitar solo ends it. I might be biased because they do have a guitar tone I’m inclined to like. But whatever.
However, while I really like the guitars on this album, I don’t care for very much of anything else. DeMarco is clearly a songwriter and guitarist before a singer. His low baritone often feels off key, wobbly, and lacking confidence. All of these are qualities that make a bad vocalist. So, if you get my gist, I think that Mac DeMarco is a bad vocalist. His low baritone falls into sleep lulls several times on the album, which is borderline aggravating (Annie is the biggest culprit here) Sure, there have been Singer-Songwriters that have bad voices that make it work (Bright Eyes, I’d dare say). But they have a kind of charisma or styling to their voice that makes their music tolerable. DeMarco’s vocals have nothing going for him.
Besides DeMarco’s really unbearable vocals, the songwriting is just…OK. There is nothing profound or deep or vaguely interesting about anything he says. All of his songwriting comes across as something we could easily get from other bands that have better sounds. So that also works against Mac DeMarco.
And then there’s the biggest offense this album commits: It’s boring. Aside from me being amused by the guitars every couple of minutes, there is nothing remotely interesting about this album. Songs that have long verses that rely more on driving percussion and DeMarco’s singing fall flat on their faces. Robson Girl has the most dreadful verse and chorus on the album. Speaking of Choruses, there are none of note. Not one infectious chorus. Nor are there any Guitar riffs that sink deep into your skin for much longer than…oh…15 seconds. It’s all in one ear and out the other.
This album isn’t horrendous. I like the guitars enough for me to be able to listen to the whole thing all the way through. Plus, tuning out DeMarco’s vocals is surprisingly effective. Maye if DeMarco kept the guitar and ditched the vocals, we could have a pretty crazy instrumental album. Or he could work with more talented vocalists and songwriters to put something else out. Or he develops his talents a bit more, which we get a very slight hint of on Still Together. Something that isn’t this.
Summary: 2 has some fantastic guitar work, but the vocals and songwriting leave a bit (a lot) to be desired.
Choice Cuts: Freaking Out The Neighborhood, Still Together
1.5/5
Stream Ode To the Viceroy below. 2 is out now on Captured Tracks
ALBUM REVIEW: Wild Nothing-Nocturne
Wild Nothing is a Dream Pop/ Chillwave group from Blacksburg, Virginia, consisting primarily of Jack Tatum. Their debut album, Gemeni, was released to high praise and hype at it’s release, which is impressive in a year where we were inundated with a ton of Dream Pop (Including the ever-so-wonderufl Teen Dream). I wasn’t the biggest fan of Gemeni, it sounded pleasant enough, but not enough to really garner my attention.
Nocturne is very, very similar to Gemeni, but then it kind of isn’t. The instruments aren’t really different. Lots of synths, a very nice sounding classic guitar (which sounds superb on the supremely solid Midnight Song), all with a touch of 1980s thrown in for good measure. The difference here is everything is much more refined. Songs soar high and above sonically, and every track on here manages to be gorgeous, and at least not boring (there were some bland tracks on Gemeni, if I recall). The guitars are my personal favorite part, because they add flavor to the synths in a way no other instrument could.
Another addition here is additional percussion, especially towards the center of the album. It helps drive many of the songs forward (Something a lot of Dream Pop really needs) without taking it out of that dream-like estate completely. The percussion, thankfully, is also sonically dated, much of it sounding like it was taken from late 80s Hip-Hop beats. which is fine since it works perfectly.
I only have a couple gripes with this album. First of all, the vocals are…meh. There are two problems that occur with them. On some songs, they get absolutely buried into the instrumentation to the point where you forget there is a vocalist. And it doesn’t work like “The Voice is an Instrument!” where everything kind of meshes together. It’s full on hidden by everything going on. But this might not be a bad thing, since the quality of the vocals are kind of, meh. Jack Tatum isn’t a very captivating singer, and when his voice is kind of the primary thing heard, it never ends up memorable or interesting. This is kind of what keeps Wild Nothing from being a really great band, not just a really great Dream Pop band.
Another half-gripe I have, and sometimes this is a good thing, is that the album is very monotonous. It’s not as much as Gemeni (In my opinion), since the Guitars mix it up enough to maintain some diversity, but this is an album that I think works better as something thrown on in the background rather than something you listen to by itself. Again, even though that sounds harsh, I don’t mean it to be. Because I really do like this album. I’m just saying if I owned a nice yacht, it would sound a lot better. But with instrumentation this great, and the improvement really clearly there, I guess it’ll work in my bedroom at 2 in the morning, too.
Summary: Nocturne improves on Gemeni’s formula outstandingly with improved instrumentation, but does maintain all the typical problems Dream Pop has these days.
Choice Cuts- Midnight Song, Shadow, Nocturne
3.5/5
Shadow is streaming below. Nocturne is out now on Captured Tracks.
Vantage Point Music 