98. Mac Demarco - “Still Beating”

Mac Demarco is one of the patron saints of Chill. He has an uncanny ability to speak to those languid parts of the soul, the soft and gooey areas that only long to relax and unwind in a word that too often tries to confine them. He can turn even the most stressful of days into a warm breeze, melting away one’s worries and cares, slowly serenading them as they lay back to watch their troubles evaporate like the entrails of smoke escaping from a joint.

On this jam in particular Demarco takes something as heart-wrenching as a breakup and turns it into a brittle sigh of melancholic acceptance. It’s the last effort, the dying whisper of a love that’s in the throes of death, but that’s all it is – a whisper. It’s chillness even in the face of annihilation, like calmly walking through the apocalypse and gazing up at the meteors of flame with only a childish sense of wonder. Saint Demarco never wavers. It’s as if there’s a cocoon surrounding him, an aura of apathy insulating him from reality and, for better or worse, numbing him from the depths of emotion. He can’t help it. He knows nothing else. Even in the face of temptation he carries on, ready to be called upon by the rest of us who can’t be so lucky.