Rock And Roll Night Club

Sound DNA

• Alt/Indie
• Indie Rock

• lo-fi
• detached
• witty

About

Mac DeMarco has long had a reputation as the court jester of 2010s indie rock, his every sincere and sweet gesture met with an affably devilish grin. But even by these standards, the is-he-joking-or-isn’t-he character study of his 2012 debut album, <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i>, might come as a shock to those who first discovered his distinctive brand of slack jangle via his later records. DeMarco has himself suggested that the “intentionally sketchy” radio-wave missives of <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i> are more of an explicit lark, songwriting-wise. And it’s hard not to miss the just-having-a-laugh attitude that runs through these twelve songs: The production is decayed; Mac’s usually honeyed vocals are dark, deep, and raspy; and the broken-radio interstitial tracks give the overall feel of someone scanning the AM dial in the waning hours of a debauched night out. Despite the record’s sleazy glam-rock rumble, there’s a quiet looseness to <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i>, which collects material recorded in a Montreal apartment, and includes revamped tunes from DeMarco’s previous project, Makeout Videotape. At the time of its release, <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i> sounded positively unassuming and intimate. And while it may now seem like an outlier in DeMarco’s discography, <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i> serves as a musical blueprint for the singer’s future sound. It’s there in the chiming guitar lines that run rampant across songs like the swaying “She’s Really All I Need,” or the loopy and chugging “One More Tear to Cry”—tracks that effectively represent DeMarco’s singular songwriting approach in chrysalis. <i>Rock and Roll Night Club</i> is an early peek behind the curtain of indie’s most openhearted trickster, as well as a reminder of his surprising unpredictability as a musical mischief-maker.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits