Mac DeMarco was always an odd fit for Captured Tracks. By the time he’d signed with the buzzy Brooklyn label in 2012, it was an indie hit factory, releasing debut albums from bedroom acts like Beach Fossils and Wild Nothing, American kids obsessed with the sounds of 1980s Britain and the undying melancholy those records conveyed. They were a far cry from their Canadian labelmate DeMarco, whose first release for the label, Rock And Roll Nightclub, sounded like Elvis fronting Ween. His first proper album, 2, which arrived later that year, sounded less like the C86-inspired songs of his labelmates and more like a Dead bootleg that’d been left out in the rain. The bands on Captured Tracks were often called dream pop; DeMarco referred to his own music as “jizz jazz.”
