Mac DeMarco has long had a reputation as the court jester of 2010s indie rock, his every sincere and sweet gesture met with an affably devilish grin. But even by these standards, the is-he-joking-or-isn’t-he character study of his 2012 debut album, Rock and Roll Night Club, might come as a shock to those who first discovered his distinctive brand of slack jangle via his later records. DeMarco has himself suggested that the “intentionally sketchy” radio-wave missives of Rock and Roll Night Club are more of an explicit lark, songwriting-wise. And it’s hard not to miss the just-having-a-laugh attitude that runs through these twelve songs: The production is decayed; Mac’s usually honeyed vocals are dark, deep and raspy; and the broken-radio interstitial tracks give the overall feel of someone scanning the AM dial in the waning hours of a debauched night out. Despite the record’s sleazy glam-rock rumble, there’s a quiet looseness to Rock and Roll Night Club, which collects material recorded in a Montreal apartment, and includes revamped tunes from DeMarco’s previous project, Makeout Videotape. At the time of its release, Rock and Roll Night Club sounded positively unassuming and intimate. And while it may now seem like an outlier in DeMarco’s discography, Rock and Roll Night Club serves as a musical blueprint for the singer’s future sound. It’s there in the chiming guitar lines that run rampant across songs like the swaying “She’s Really All I Need”, or the loopy and chugging “One More Tear to Cry”—tracks that effectively represent DeMarco’s singular songwriting approach in chrysalis. Rock and Roll Night Club is an early peek behind the curtain of indie’s most open-hearted trickster, as well as a reminder of his surprising unpredictability as a musical mischief-maker.