Salad Days

And he soon outran the “indie” portion of success. As someone who went to college in 2013, it’s hard to overstate just how ubiquitous DeMarco was. The kids who discovered Inner Speaker in high school were finally on their own; sex, drugs and soft rock all at their disposal without the leering eye of parents. DeMarco, whose big hit “Freaking Out the Neighborhood” was an apology to his mom for doing dumb shit in public, was the perfect touchstone. Despite his discomfort. Interviews at the time find him nervously chuckling when it came to his success. And that bore out on Salad Days, a mighty wrangling with fame disguised as digestible pop nuggets.

The opening trio of songs viewed DeMarco’s rise and unease from differing perspectives. The opener/title track was another grinning apology to his mom, but also found him in the delicate balance between enjoying his early 20s while sticking to the brutal touring and recording schedule he’d placed himself on. Following “Blue Boy” was a sparkling self-directed pep talk and “Brother” started as a zen kaon that mutated into a psychedelic freak out. It was a brief descent into true darkness in an album often overstuffed with cheesy goofs.

DeMarco only sunk into the murk for about half of Salad Days and the album is worse for it. The three-part run from “Let Her Go” to “Let My Baby Stay,” all seem to think “Kokomo” was The Beach Boys’ best song. There are behind the scenes shenanigans and meddling we’ll never be privy to, but it was said that label Captured Tracks, concerned with DeMarco’s malady-laden tunes, forced him to come up with a single that would rival “Freaking Out the Neighborhood.” DeMarco came up with “Let Her Go,” and the label’s sticky fingerprints could be seen across the most saccharine moments of Salad Days. DeMarco wrote and recorded every instrument by himself, and his (and the label’s) limits are painfully clear through those tracks, especially after opening the album with surprising emotional depth. If there’s something DeMarco must pay for, it’s the legions of slacker pop pastiche “Let it Go” helped create. Last year, an article on the failed grunge revival of the 2010s went around, including bands like Turnover or Cloud Nothings. I’d quibble with the exact terminology, but the ‘90s indebtedness of all the bands was undeniable. As was, for the most part, their horrific output. Whitney, Turnover, former DeMarco bandmate Homeshake; looking back on their catalogues is an exercise in futility. Utterly empty psychedelia that, at best, ascended to “kinda pretty.” And DeMarco certainly indulged in hollow pleasantries on Salad Days.

Something that DeMarco could not have foretold was the literal unwashed masses that would follow him. Attending the University of Oregon in Eugene during 2014 might as well have been ground zero for DeMarco fandom. The Salad Days tour played a pizza parlor that was entirely unready for the rabid hordes that descended upon it. I had a friend who couldn’t grab a ticket and, instead, went to the pizza shop in the afternoon and hid in the bathroom for four hours to get in. That was the sort of person attracted to DeMarco and I can say, without a doubt, it was the worst crowd I’ve ever seen. It stunk worse than a Comic-Con, with the added scent of stale weed (growing up is realizing you can buy drugs, becoming mature means you realize you can buy good drugs). I had a friend who was dating this slackjawed asshole in Holden Caulfield cosplay without the self-justified self-loathing. He crowdsurfed as DeMarco jokingly covered Coldplay’s “Yellow,” kicking multiple people in the head with steeltoed boots as he sailed by.

I talked to DeMarco after the show, only to be interrupted by a few folks asking him to sign cigarette cartons and offering him smokes, even while it was well known he was trying to quit. Outside of the crowd surfing fiasco, there’s no image from Salad Days that has stuck with me more. A normal dude, better than most of us at hiding anxiety, suddenly thrust into the spotlight and urged to do the very things he knew were killing him. After Salad Days, DeMarco meandered, working with Frank Ocean, releasing EPs, two albums of middling quality, then a truly strange series of extracurriculars with the instrumental 5 Easy Hot Dogs and the mammoth One Wayne G, which I don’t have the space, time or brain cells to go into.

In the end, Salad Days’ centerpiece, and still DeMarco’s finest tune, was the one that wrestled with the darkness the best. “Passing Out Pieces,” is massive, riding a warbly organ and another apology to Mrs. DeMarco (seriously this lady has gone through some stuff). It’s DeMarco slowly realizing he was both passing through his life like a ghost and unconsciously allowing strangers to take pieces of his soul as he passed by. Spoon would later holler “cardsharks and street preachers they want my soul,” but, in a sudden, meteoric rise to fame, DeMarco must have felt that every single person who was in arms reach was trying to nick a part of him. Sure, the kids at the show may have thought it was harmless, but how could you not see a bunch of demons, tempting you each night with smokes? They begged DeMarco to return to his dirtbag ways that had brought fame but not peace.