Recently DeMarco jumped out of a cake onstage at Baby's All Right, a favourite Brooklyn venue that was celebrating its birthday, but his own shows have outgrown the bar. Like many nominally successful alternative acts who don't have access to mainstream radio, DeMarco tours extensively. Today's independent icons are the equivalent of 1970s rock bands: road warriors clocking up show after show.

"We've been on tour since November 2013, which is months before the album even came out. It's fun this time. Last time I got a little screwy, but I just had to focus on why I was feeling that when I really should have been so much better. Then you figure out the parts that bum you out and the ones that you like and focus on the latter," notes DeMarco.

"I like meeting people, especially kids who are interested in what I'm doing, and playing shows. What happens is that if you're not careful you get bummed out because you're jaded or sick of a certain song," he adds. "A big part of it is how much drugs and alcohol you consume. Like it or not, it's fun to do but the day after or week after your mood and the way you are with other people suffers, and that's not a good thing to fall into."

DeMarco has the laidback air of a man who likes to have a good time, but his appeal runs contrary to the archetype of the screwed-up musician whose appetites exceed his audiences. That may stem from Demarco's feelings about his own father, who has had considerable addiction problems and wasn't a part of DeMarco's life from the age of five onwards.

His music also defies easy expectations, suggesting an acceptance of life's difficulties and a readiness to mature that acquires a contemplative calm thanks to languid guitar parts, drily produced and intimately recorded vocals, and bursts of baroque keyboards. There's no overt anger in Demarco's music, but some gorgeous key changes, and on Salad Days he sounds like an eccentric outcast from the 1970s washed up on the shores of digital home recording gear.