There’s undeniably a bid for respectability going on here – DeMarco once famously performed with a drumstick up his bum, which is a reputation that takes some shedding. The album ends with Watching Him Fade Away, in which even woozier organs help relay the complex feelings of losing someone you dislike yet are inextricably bound to (“Haven’t got the guts to call him up / Walk around as if you never cared in the first place.”). Opening track My Old Man expresses his growing fear, over acoustic guitar and reverb-drenched organ, of seeing his dad when he looks in the mirror. But his musical take on their relationship – which dominates his third full-length album – is more nuanced.
#Mac demarco this old dog father mac
While many may be quick to call out DeMarco’s ripe age of 27, considering how often the word and notion of “growing old” comes up, DeMarco is the first to admit, “I’m not old, I’m a kid.” He then pauses, before seemingly realizing for the first time: “If I feel old now, I don’t know how the hell I’m going to feel when I’m really old… That will be strange.When it comes to his relationship with his father, Mac DeMarco has decided not to sit on the fence: “ He’s kind of a piece of shit,” was one recent verdict on the man who walked out on him when he was four. However, Mac soon found out that his father was suffering from cancer. After Mac became famous, his father came back into his life. His father left when Mac was quite young and met him rarely in the following years. From his new album’s shortest song (“Sister” at 1:19) to its longest (“Moonlight on the River” at 7:03, which features a lengthy psych-rock instrumental section), DeMarco has crafted what may be his most compelling, cautionary and oddly enough, comforting album yet. Mac DeMarco always had a strained and complicated relationship with his father. Rolling through life, to roll over and die.” Now, three years later, it’s as if such thoughts have consumed him. DeMarco first touched on the lattermost subject on the title track of his 2014 sophomore album Salad Days, in which he starts the song by stating, “As I’m getting older, chip up on my shoulder. It’s about complacency, slowing down, growing older… becoming bored with things.” He goes on to say that when he’s alone writing, he’s able to really reflect, “And then you realize you’re getting pretty used to how fucking strange things are.”ĭue to the universal relatability of “being alive,” This Old Dog tells a simple, though spellbinding, story of some of life’s guarantees: family (in all its various forms), home, love and impending death. “ is not about my career or opportunities or anything like that,” DeMarco clarifies. “It’s more about the general vibe of being alive.
While scene may not have had much sway on the album’s outcome, it’s clear the concept of time passing by weighs heavy. DeMarco contemplates age with “My Old Man” and “This Old Dog” (he reveals he has never had a dog, though there is one who lives down the block from him named Cadence that runs to his house and scratches on the door), and waxes nostalgic on “For The First Time” and “Dreams From Yesterday” - his favorite off the album that serves as both a check up and reminder “to make sure I count my blessings” (one of which is his upcoming tour with The Flaming Lips that came about when DeMarco met frontman Wayne Coyne at a Tame Impala show in New York). “The only difference was looking out the window and being like, ‘Oh, there’s a palm tree.’” The rest of the album was finished in Los Angeles, where DeMarco recently relocated to from Queens, New York, but he says the change of coast had no lyrical or sonic influence on the album: “It’s just one bedroom to another I was in the same headspace,” he says. Sure enough, This Old Dog is a more expansive affair on all fronts. Once DeMarco’s label told him if he wanted to put out a record in early in 2017 that it would have to be done around Christmas time, he decided to start by pulling from the ones he already had. Mac DeMarco’s last release, 2015‘s Another One, was variously described as either a mini-LP or a lengthy EP, and the understanding always was that it wouldn’t be until later that we’d get DeMarco’s next album proper. Since he didn’t plan on sharing them with the public, they ended up sitting for some time - a new, and unintentional, tactic for the indie artist, considering in the past once he has finished a project he typically releases it “as quickly as possible” (evidenced by the five projects he has released in the past five years). Looking to the past largely shaped this album, from the lyrics even to the way in which the record was pieced together. Back in early 2016, DeMarco wrote several songs that he says “were just for myself” while still living in New York.