2

Meet Mac Demarco. He hails from Vancouver, British Columbia but has transplanted to Montreal. It's hard to describe what he does as other than laid-back fun, with simplified guitar lines and non-pretentious singing. I almost didn't want to give it a chance because it seemed so good-natured and sweet and reminiscent of Jimmy Buffett. If anything, 2 borders on sounding so cohesive the songs become indistinguishable from one another. The album's gentle acoustic closer, "Still Together," does much to even out the rest of the album, wrapping up the eccentric smoky guitar jams and tongue-in-cheek moments of 2 with an unexpectedly sweet slice of spare, devotional balladry. DeMarco is still a befuddling character, but the compressed landscape of 2 takes steps away from his cartoonish beginnings toward something equally strange, but possibly more grown up. Buy your copy of 2 here.