Rock and Roll Night Club

Rock and Roll Night Club is Canadian recording artist Mac DeMarco's debut mini-LP. It was recorded in 2012 in DeMarco's Montreal-based studio Jizz Jazz Studios and released through Captured Tracks on March 13, 2012.

Rock and Roll Night Club
Studio album by
Mac DeMarco
ReleasedMarch 13, 2012 (2012-03-13)
Recorded2011
StudioJizz Jazz Studios
(Montreal, Quebec)[1]
Genre
Length26:51
LabelCaptured Tracks
ProducerMac DeMarco
Mac DeMarco chronology
Rock and Roll Night Club
(2012)		 2
(2012)

Composition

Rock and Roll Night Club combines elements of American soul, chopped and screwed music, glam rock, 1950s rock and roll, garage rock, new wave and Captured Tracks' signature jangle guitar pop sound.[3][4][5][6] Pitchfork's Evan Minsker opined that, lyrically, "it's probably safe to assume that at least 80% of Night Club is laced with a meta joke that nobody's in on except DeMarco,"[2] and No Ripcord described his performance on the record as resembling a "hopelessly romantic swinger."[4] DeMarco himself said Rock And Roll Night Club was a joke as well, saying that he was being "intentionally sketchy" in making what Elliot Sharp of the official site for Red Bull described as "over-the-top", "conceptual", "kooky", and overall "a trashy, sleazy rock album that celebrated rock's trashy, sleazy core."[5]

Rock and Roll Night Club garnered several comparisons to the works of Ariel Pink (left) and Lou Reed (right).[7][4][8]

DeMarco's vocals on the first rough half of Rock and Roll Night Club were analyzed to be an impersonation of Elvis Presley.[8][5] The first two songs, which No Ripcord compared to Charlie Feathers, "are both written in the point of view of a heartthrob whose eyes are dead set on his girl, whether he wants to play games with her, have an intimate night, or even make mental annotations on her country girl style."[4] The Peter Sagar co-written[1] "Baby's Wearing Blue Jeans" was called by Allmusic's Fred Thomas a "weird denim-fetish anthem", containing clean guitars and muffled drums in its instrumentation.[7] The exact same vocal melody and soft singing is later brought into "One More Tear to Cry", which Thomas analogized as a Lou Reed song produced by Ariel Pink, and then [7] "European Vegas", a song in which DeMarco "pleas his baby to stay one more night while a jangly chord chimes in with a dash of sorrow," according to No Ripcord.[4] "Vegas" likewise reflects "One More Tear"'s use of slight variations of the same melody as the previous tracks.[7] Thomas opined that "instead of being an annoyingly repetitive conceptual misfire, the identical melodies work in DeMarco's homespun glam thug sonnets in an if-it-ain't-broke kinda way, lending different shades of the same color to their respective songs."[7] However, a new melody is introduced on "She's Really All I Need", a track which was lyrically compared by Loud and Quiet to Pavement.[8] and instrumentally containing wobbly guitar riffs and "beachy" percussion, as well as the absence of DeMarco's distorted vocals.[7]

Some say "Moving Like Mike" is about Brooklyn Based Video Editor "Doc" Mike Kutsch, but it is most likely an out-of-key "dork-fest ode" to Michael Jackson that restores the overall vibe of the LP, after the "She's Really All I Need"-induced departure.[7] The album's standard track list is closed with the Lou Reed-style funk song "I'm a Man",[8] Initially titled "Eyeballs", DeMarco said he was trying to write about a man's lifestyle in Montreal with the song.[9] The bonus track "Only You", lifted from the Makeout Videotape album Ying Yang was described by Thomas as near towards a modern take on indie rock, and sounding like a worn-out cassette demo recorded by the band Deerhunter around the time of their third studio album Microcastle.[7] The song forms a Duane Eddy-esque twangy guitar line into a "garage stomp" by the time its "dark, seductive chorus" comes in.[4] Minsker describes the two bonus tracks, "Only You" and "Me & Mine", as the "biggest surprise" of the album, comparing the two tracks to Real Estate and emphasizing the contrast of these two songs with the rest of the album. However, Minsker later resolved that there is a relatively small difference between the "goofy creep" who sings about "the boogie woogie woman lookin' my way" and the "straightforward crooner" who sings "I'm done crying over her."[2]

Recording

All of the tracks were recorded on a TASCAM 244 Portastudio 4 track cassette recorder except for one track, which was recorded on a Fostex VF-80. The recording took place in a Montreal apartment that Demarco and his girlfriend shared. The vocals and drums were all recorded with a Shure Beta 58A. The guitars and bass were all Direct input into the 244. The recording made extensive use of the 244's pitch control, Demarco described this to Tapeop Magazine: "I was trying to make a Ramones record... I thought, 'I'm going to do basic power chord riffs, I'm going to do solos, and I'm going to do it really fast.' It turned out I'm awful at it. When I slowed things down it was like, 'Ah, now I've got something'". Demarco also used a method of track summing to record more than the 4 track limit: "I learned to ping-pong the 4-track too, so I would do three tracks, bounce it to one, do another three, and hopefully the song would be done by then". Bouncing the tracks degraded the signal resulting in generation loss. This contributed to the sludgy lo-fi sound of the record and was partly inspired by the techniques of Joe Meek's I Hear a New World. Mixing was a challenge due to the limitations of the 244. For the guitars Demarco often turned the parametric equalizer up all the way and adjusted the gain to remove the bass and provide a space for them in the mix. Extreme panning was also used to separate the channels. An Alesis MicroVerb 4 was used for effects on guitars and vocals.[10]

Critical reception
Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic79/100[11]
Review scores
SourceRating
The 4058/10[12]
AllMusic[7]
Beats Per Minute78%[3]
Loud and Quiet8/10[8]
No Ripcord7/10[4]
Pitchfork7.2/10[2]

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 79 based on 5 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[11] Fred Thomas of AllMusic opined: "Rock and Roll Night Club is a confusing record, but not a mess. On the contrary, it's so deeply calculated that the intentions and possible motivations of its songs are likely to be lost on most. This would be a problem if the good songs weren't so incredible and strange and the weak ones so immediately forgettable."[7]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Mac DeMarco, except where noted.

Standard edition[13][14]
No.TitleLength
1."Rock and Roll Night Club"3:10
2."(96.7 The Pipe)"0:34
3."Baby's Wearing Blue Jeans" (DeMarco, Peter Sagar)3:33
4."One More Tear to Cry"4:04
5."European Vegas"3:17
6."(106.2 Breeze FM)"1:00
7."She's Really All I Need"3:03
8."Moving Like Mike"2:57
9."Me and Jon, Hanging On"2:41
10."I'm a Man"2:32
Total length:26:51
CD/Digital download bonus tracks[15][16][17]
No.TitleLength
11."Only You"2:58
12."Me & Mine"2:04
Total length:31:53

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes.[1]

  • Mac DeMarco – vocals, guitar, bass guitar, drums, percussion, keyboards, composer
  • Maddy Glowicki – background vocals on "European Vegas"
  • Josh Bonati – mastering
  • Ryan McCardie – cover design, layout
  • Evan Prosofsky – cover photography
  • Peter Sagar – co-writing on "Baby's Wearing Blue Jeans"

Release history
Country Date Format Label
Germany,[18] United Kingdom,[19] United States[16] March 13, 2012 Digital download Captured Tracks
United States March 27, 2012 CD,[13] LP[14]
Germany March 30, 2012 LP[20]
April 13, 2012  CD[21]
United Kingdom October 22, 2012 CD,[22] LP[23]

References
  1. Rock and Roll Night Club (Back cover). Mac DeMarco. United States: Captured Tracks. 2012. CT140.CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. Minsker, Evan (April 10, 2012). "Mac DeMarco: Rock and Roll Night Club EP". Pitchfork. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  3. Wolfson, David (April 19, 2012). "Album Review: Mac DeMarco – Rock and Roll Nightclub EP". Beats Per Minute. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  4. Rodriguez, Juan Edgardo (April 13, 2012). "Mac DeMarco: Rock and Roll Night Club – Music Review". No Ripcord. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  5. Sharp, Elliot (October 29, 2013). "2 Sketchy Days With Mac DeMarco". Red Bull. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
  6. Lindsay, Cam (April 3, 2012). "Mac DeMarco Rock and Roll Night Club". Exclaim!. Retrieved September 23, 2015.
  7. Thomas, Fred. "Rock and Roll Night Club – Mac DeMarco". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  8. Stubbs, Stuart (July 2012). "Mac Demarco – Rock'n'Roll Nightclub". Loud and Quiet. Archived from the original on February 25, 2016. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
  9. "An Interview with Performing Artist Mac DeMarco". Seagate Technology. September 18, 2012. Retrieved September 22, 2015.
  10. "Ben Berke and Jay Mamana - Varispeed and Beyond". Tapeop. Retrieved 22 September 2017.
  11. "Reviews for Rock and Roll Night Club by Mac DeMarco". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved April 6, 2014.
  12. Joyce, Collin (March 14, 2012). "Mac DeMarco – Rock And Roll Night Club". The 405. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
  13. "Rock & Roll Night Club". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  14. "Rock & Roll Night Club Vinyl". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  15. "Rock and Roll Night Club". iTunes Store. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  16. "Rock and Roll Night Club". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  17. "Release "Rock and Roll Night Club" by Mac DeMarco - MusicBrainz". MusicBrainz. Retrieved April 10, 2015.
  18. "Rock and Roll Night Club". Amazon.com (in German). Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  19. "Rock and Roll Night Club". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  20. "Rock and Roll Night Club Ep [Vinyl Maxi-Single]". Amazon.com (in German). Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  21. "Rock and Roll Night Club Ep". Amazon.com (in German). Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  22. "Rock and Roll Night Club". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
  23. "Rock and Roll Night Club [VINYL]". Amazon.com. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
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