You Know When I’m Lonely

Mac DeMarco “Annie”

Mac DeMarco’s guitar style is fluid and so consistently melodic that it seems jarring whenever he actually strums a chord. There’s an airy, inviting sound to his songs – a mellow late night vibe that reminds me of a smoothed-out Neil Hagerty or a more restless version of The Clientele. His new album is a pleasure in small doses – it’s all too samey to hold my attention beyond three or four songs at a time – and a good starting point for an artist who will probably make better things down the line. He’s got the melody and the atmosphere but he needs to work on composition and structure. The free-floating quality of his playing may be more compelling with a stronger groove in the rhythm section – you kinda get close to that on “Annie,” which has a nice mid-Seventies vibe to it.

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