2

Yet another easy laid back rock album by Mac DeMarco. This one also contains several great songs and if you close your eyes, it gives you the feeling of a micro holiday on the beach.

2 is Mac’s groovy guitar laden trip into his cigarette loving odd ball lifestyle. His musical is always a joy to listen to as it’s carefree and rather simple pleasantries. This was significantly better than his first album and a precursor to his best albums with salad days and another one. There are some great songs on this with great guitar tunes that give this plenty of replay ability. Just wish he’d come back to this kind of style. 8.3/10

This played and I listened

I think he wants me to rate this a two...

Great tunes, a modern indie classic

Got the chance to see Mac play in Frankfurt a few years back, and his silly goofy antics (+3D animated gif of an anthropomorphic toilet that played the whole show) went over about as well as you could expect with Germans, known comedians. Anyway, I appreciated the chance to revisit DeMarco’s signature slacker style. Felt there was an overexposure of his music a few years ago, so it was nice to come back and remember why all that hype was justified. Don’t let the moniker of ‘Bedroom Pop’ fool you – there’s a surprising amount of recording tracks and studio professionalism baked into each song. It’s what gives the laid-back, chorus-drenched tracks such a rich, encompassing feel, and DeMarco’s soulful lyricism + knack for songwriting means the album shines with genuine human emotion wrapped in great guitar licks. Great add, there’s a distinct lack of late-teens indie here so far and this LP goes a long way to address that.

Hell yea. The last Mac DeMarco album I would've added, but I can't complain. 4

Another one where I should like it more than I do. It's fine, some good songs but not enough to make me really like it. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3.5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Yeah, I remember the hype about this album and artist back in 2012. Even saw the guy play on stage at a festival -- it was kind of cool to watch, but the hype still went over my head back then. Since those days I've revisited Mac De Marco's discography, and I now admit he penned quite a few very nice songs -- it's just that those great songs were not immediately identifiable below the unobtrusive, cool-as-a-cat surface instrumentation -- groovy but streamlined to a fault at times. To be honest, I still think that De Marco's music borders on muzak once in a while -- even more so in later albums, which is why I at least have benevolent feelings towards the man's *de facto* LP debut bearing that very ironic "2" title. If you pay attention to details here, some chorus or hooks have weird things going on in them -- slightly darker undertones conveyed through very subtle psychedelic effects, or suddenly zany guitar work, or one sudden off-kilter chord change in a song or two. And conversely, you also have very sweet moments, like that falsetto singing on acoustic closer "Still Together", ending on a very sweet exchange between Mac and his partner, falling asleep at his side... I think if I had had to select a Mac De Marco album, I might also have selected the next one, *Salad Days*, which is sonically a tad bit more expansive and ambitious for some of its own peaks. But apart from that, the two LPs are pretty close affairs -- so one or the other could either possibly be included in my own list of keepers, granted there's still room left for Mac De Marco in it. I don't really know what else to say about this album, to use a phrase sometimes written by the reviewer who suggested this record, often at a loss for words. Maybe it's better to keep things simple and casual anyway, especially since that mindset perfectly fits with De Marco's artistry. "Casual" doesn't mean you can't be productive, by the way... Mac is actually prolific when it comes to recording demos, belying assumptions one can have about so-called "slacker-rock. See his 8-hour-long *One Wayne G* release on streaming services, so impressive in terms of quantity, to have unarguable evidence of that. It's a release that's probably harboring some gems among the small, monthly-demoed muzak fry. The jewel "Stratocaster" -- that I found through sheer luck as browsed through the 199 demos (!) -- seems to indicate that, at least. One last thing to conclude my disjointed rant... There's an alternate universe where Mac De Marco, instead of being an unassuming "slacker yacht-rocker", would have kept digging the glam-rock groove initiated by his first lo-fi EP "Rock And Roll Night Club", and thus kept on singing in a deeper punk crooner voice, somewhere between Elvis and The New York Dolls. And I would pay a high price just to check if he had also become famous in said alternative universe, and what sort of music he would play in 2026 in that different timeline... 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes. ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 77 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 95 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 189 ---- Émile, tu trouveras ma dernière réponse sous le *Inside* de Bo Burnham

Cozy slacker rock. Not a particularly groundbreaking album or anything, but it has heart. Also titling your debut album "2" is a good bit.

Oddball, clever ( maybe a bit much so), obviously a lot of talent but a little thin as these single artist productions tend to be. Not a bad listen though, I'd listen to this artist again.

Wobbly and twee sounding music. Just found it really same-ish, and that guitar tone really grated after a few songs. Not bad, just not great.

Not unpleasant but did not grab me.

short & sweet, if a little sleepy

Mac DeMarco is one of those singers/bands that become to me almost like a joke/internet meme and it's funny to discover that they actually exist and have real albums. Good instruments, bland album.

The TikTok guy!

This was nice and enjoyable. It didn’t really shake up my world but I liked it.

Indie rock, jangle pop. Ni fu ni fa.

Sweet little 'easy-listening' album

Märklig platta och märklig musik. Inte helt oävet dock.

Nice listen

Suprisingly catchy - honest with no dimensions. My daughter had heard a couple of the tracks and he's obviously well known enough for 1 billion listens.

Buen cantautor multi-instrumentista, en el que predominan los tiempos medios y relajados. Canciones que se pueden escuchar bien, pero con un poco falto de brillo. Para ser un total desconocido, bien por descubrirlo, pero no me ha supuesto nada más.

Meh. Didn’t really like this one.