He seemed tired, extremely polite nonetheless, but above all, away from the stage lights and cameras, he seemed like a normal person. When I interviewed DeMarco during his world tour for 2015’s mini-LP, Another One, there were no antics to report. From vulgar classic rock covers to interviews with his mother, DeMarco’s goofball personality is almost certainly what strikes you first and foremost, but it’s his undeniable penchant for vintage guitar and synth sounds that keeps you invested. If there’s anything DeMarco is known for, beloved or despised for, it’s his onstage persona and antics. This attitude is reflective of the album. Maron is known for his very conversational approach to interviewing, and he and DeMarco laugh throughout the conversation – even when discussing DeMarco’s absent father, the overarching theme of DeMarco’s (technically third) full-length LP, This Old Dog.
MAC DEMARCO THIS OLD DOG REVIEW MAC
That is an excerpt from Mac DeMarco’s recent interview on WTF with Marc Maron. “ Just wait until you hear the rest, buddy.” However, what they do have to look forward to is a remarkable singer-songwriter producing more incredible work.“The old hippie’s out there somewhere, yeah. Much to the disappointment of this fans, Mac has not enclosed his current address in the final moments of the LP, which he had done on 2015’s Another One.
The latter, an infectious gem from the MacMaster, features one of his most beautiful vocal melodies and guitar lines. Tracks like “One Another” and “A Wolf Who Wears Sheeps Clothes” wouldn’t sound out of place on something like Rubber Soul. The lyrics are thoughtful and sensitive, yet each verse closes with a stinging remark about his father’s absence in his life: “The thought of him no longer being around/I’m sure it will be sad but not really different”.ĭespite the maturity of his lyrics, he hasn’t lost his ability to write a good old-fashioned pop song. His father, who became ill during the making of the album and also inspired the Lennon-esque ballad, “Watching Him Fading Away”. It’s perhaps the most profound song that he’s penned, yet incredibly simple. In the end, since he doesn’t really know his dad, he looks in the mirror and finds himself becoming unrecognizable. However, in Mac’s case, he’s becoming more like his father, who he really never knew, and though he doesn’t want this to happen, he can’t stop the nature progression of aging. In “My Old Man” he describes the feeling that many people can empathize with realizing they’ve become more like their parents than they really ever wanted to be. While Mac has shown signs of writing very mature lyrical pieces in the past, “Salad Days” comes to mind, the tracks on This Old Dog feature an underlying theme of adulthood and real maturity. Tracks like “Dreams From Yesterday”, “For the First Time” and “On the Level” are soaked in cheesy-synthesizers, something Mac has flirted with in the past, but never exploited as much as he has here. The other half of the record sounds like it was composed for an unaired episode of Miami Vice. While his previous sound was distinctive and charmingly quirky, it’s time for a change and This Old Dog is the perfect transition to a new musical direction. Instead the “jizz jazz” king relies heavily on acoustic guitars, giving the vibe the songs were written around a campfire. His signature warbley, chorus-drenched guitar, which had dominated his previous releases is scarcely found on This Old Dog, and when it does make an appearance it’s generally mixed under the other instrumentation. Known to many for his zany persona and onstage presence, This Old Dog, his latest release, seems more so that any album in his catalogue to contradict his often childish behavior.įrom the opening track, “My Old Man”, you can hear that this is a going to be a different kind of record from Mr. Nearly two years since his last release, Mac DeMarco returns with a collection of 13 songs, which may surprise some of his longtime fans.