If the first time you listened to Mac DeMarco’s "Ode To Viceroy" you were like, I bet that dude will make a grainy VHS video to accompany this song, you'd be completely right. You'd also be completely right because it is obvious based on his sound, which loops around from insincerity and then plunges full blast into complete heartrending openness. Though this video features many shots of—SURPRISE!—DeMarco smoking and messing around with his guitar, the track loses none of its weariness. On record, the defining image of the song (besides DeMarco being really stoked on his cigarettes) is him, gap-toothed, waking up in the early morning, smoking a cigarette with his back pressed against his pillows. It's a love song, but it's an exhausted one, and the subject just happens to be cigarettes. Once you figure that out, DeMarco's tongue-in-cheek jokes seem just slightly more serious. 2 is out right now on Captured Tracks.
