This gap toothed Canadian songwriter has been billed as the Clown Prince of Indie. A jester and a wild child. A drunken prankster. But with his third album release, he’s stripped away most of the nuttiness and settled into a comfortable artistic groove. And it’s hard not to feel then that this is his most honest record yet.

Mac DeMarco has carved out a near permanent place in Pitchfork And Company news reels with his wacky, slacky persona. He chain smokes through interviews always appearing like he’d just woken up; his live shows are mixed up with off-beat crowd banter, varying degrees of nudity and the occasional tongue in cheek classic rock cover. He dresses like a Stateside Scarfie and apparently lives like one too and the best part of it is that you always feel like you’re in on the joke with him. The Guardian called him a ‘Brohemian Hero’. He’s a slacker and he’s proud of it – or at least he would be if he was bothered enough to care. Mac just does what he does and leaves us to come up with our own projections. Speaking of which, he was born Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV. Go ahead, make assumptions.

There’s nothing as embracingly weird as ‘Cooking up Something Good’ or ‘Ode to Viceroy’ on this album, though he’s definitely kept the same lo-fi, jangly sound that he’s created. Nobody sounds like DeMarco. ‘Salad Days’ begins with the title track. There’s no instrumental lead in, it’s straight into the first verse. “As I’m getting older/Chip upon my shoulder/Rolling through life to roll over and die”. Maybe those opening lines sound borderline nihilistic but that’s the point. In a world where nothing makes sense and everything is contradicted, what is there to believe in? Who even cares? DeMarco is an advocate of keeping things chill and simple. You can still write honest and beautiful things without lyrics that read like an essay. For every John Lennon, there’s a Paul McCartney. MDM definitely draws comparisons to Macca in his song writing (if not his lifestyle…). Wisdom through whimsy. The wisdom in this song actually comes from his mother, who tells the ennui-inflicted singer to act his age and try another year.

‘Blue Boy’ has a lovely, sinewy guitar lead in, and at 2:07 is the shortest track of the lot. It’s a sleepy (in a good way) reworking of the ethos of Hakuna Matata. ‘Brother’ offers similar advice in the form of brotherly camaraderie. “Take it slowly brother/Let it go”. I’ve got to imagine that this guy has seen ‘The Big Lebowski’ more than 5 times. He sings with the same kind of reverence for the romantic life of the slacker that that film embodies. One dose of Let it Be, another dose of Taking it Easy (but not the Eagles – I hate them), a third dose of chemical inebriation and a final dose of Do What You Want When You Want.

You can try to pigeonhole Mac DeMarco as an alcoholic or a lewd party animal or whatever but none of that is true. He’s no tragic comedian or tortured artist. Those are stereotypes that fans and critics apply from a distance, and they only work if we continue to see the person as the one dimensional public image that the melting pot of the media has created and nurtured. Mac DeMarco is a real guy, whose humanity shines through his music. “Don’t go telling me how this boy should be leading his own life/Sometimes rough but generally speaking I’m fine/If you don’t agree with the things that go on in my life/Well, honey that’s fine but know that you’re wasting your time”. Yeah, he says it pretty well himself on ‘Goodbye Weekend’.

‘Let Her Go’ and ‘Treat Her Better’ are pretty little songs about maintaining healthy relationships, while ‘Let My Baby Stay’ is a plea to the powers that be to extend his girlfriend’s American visa. The two met at high school and have been together since before the fame kicked in. Thankfully, said visa has since been renewed. ‘Passing out Pieces’ gets into some serious mid-era Beatles territory that deals with the disturbing reality of living in the media microscope. Sonically, this and ‘Chamber of Reflection’ are the two biggest departures from his usual sound, not just on this album but probably in his career. It’s a credit to his talent that Mac is able to make them fit in so well. The late three hit combo of Pieces, Treat Her Better and Chambers is my favourite stretch of the album ‘Chamber of Reflection’ especially is completely out of left field. Synths and keys in a drenched a wall of sound, and some wobbly falsetto. But it grooves, man. Then we ‘Go Easy’ once more before the instrumental track ’Jonny’s Odyssey’ polishes things off, with a final spoken outro from the man himself:

“Hi guys, this is Mac. Thank you for joining me. See you again soon, bye bye.”

He’s so openly honest that the whole album feels like a window into his home and not in a heavily edited MTV way. No, an actual view of an actual person’s life. While some people are saying that he’s matured with his new record, I’d say it’s more a case of stripping back the curtains further. Here’s a guy with so few pretentions that it’s completely refreshing amongst the many false idols that flood the popular music scene. He’s indie in the true sense of the word. Sure, Mac has his antics. He doesn’t need a fabricated image to speak to the masses though. He’s comfortable with who he is and doesn’t really care what people think about that, which is, ironically, completely endearing. Mac DeMarco’s ‘Salad Days’ may be over, but his Glory Days are yet to come.