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Making sad music comes naturally to any musician who’s thinking sad thoughts, and as powerful as some of these songs are, it doesn’t seem like DeMarco’s going out of his way to make a stark statement of personal anguish. But in the interim between records, he seems to have spent his wads of touring money on new toys.ĭoes all of this distract from the pathos of the record? No, because he’s not necessarily going for pathos. His distinctive electric guitar tone-sort of like Vini Reilly soaked in vegetable oil-is largely absent here. “Baby You’re Out” is particularly delightful in how a sort of tinny synthesized pop adds carbonation to the otherwise conventional acoustic-guitar landscape. Here, his dopey melodies are enhanced by more synths than before, their warped sounds harkening back to Salad Days standout “Chamber of Reflection.” He has fun with an old Roland CR-78 drum machine, which he doesn’t just set to pitter-patter but milks for its lo-fi quirks.
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Most of the songs here run about three minutes, and the only reason the album isn’t under 40 is because of the zoo he unleashes on “Moonlight on the River.” And if he isn’t terribly gifted at choruses, he sure knows how to write a riff: “Baby You’re Out” and the almost “Stir It Up”-like “One Another” are insidious earworms. DeMarco, likewise, isn’t one to heap on the bells and whistles. One of the most astonishing things about the Beatles is how much they could squeeze into under three minutes-the standard of the day, which allotted less fat than today’s three-and-a-half. He’s also kin to Lennon in his efficiency.
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He doesn’t blindside us with truth but lets us find it for ourselves. It’s an approach that rewards repeat listening.
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They’re frills, albeit tasteful ones, and they trick us into seeing his songs as artifice when they in fact express deep and sometimes painful sentiment. He loves a good idiom, and his constant use of old-fashioned phrases like “ my old man” and “ wake up, sleepyhead” puts just a little bit of extra distance between himself and the audience. He shies away from the hyper-specific references that define the songwriting style dominant now in most genres. He rarely employs a word longer than two syllables. The laconic DeMarco, who’s shrugged off the record as being about “my family and my life right now and the way I’m feeling and stuff,” probably prefers it that way.ĭeMarco’s favorite album of all time is John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and like Lennon’s, his songwriting is good-naturedly vague. The feeling it imparts is a more general melancholy about the transitory nature of time. If you didn’t know the backstory, you might be able to guess something was wrong and that DeMarco was thinking about his own aging and mortality more than before. These are records that trap the listener in a room with the artists’ grievances. Many recently acclaimed albums have been rooted in well-publicized personal tragedy. It’s the most wrenching thing DeMarco’s ever written. The album ends with “Watching Him Fade Away,” in which the Canadian singer-songwriter admits the only reason he’d want to talk to his dad is to tell him off-the only connection they could still have. When he returns to his childhood home on “Moonlight on the River,” he describes it in the sort of nostalgic language that tells us he doesn’t visit much the song ends with a barrage of feral noises, as if the landscape has become unfamiliar. “On the Level” is structured as an entreaty from a father for his son to “ make an old man proud,” which is awfully ominous given the family history, and even without that knowledge, there’s still those creepy, bent synthesizers.įamily, and DeMarco’s increased distance from it, is a major concern of This Old Dog. When he looks in the mirror and sees more of his old man in him, we know he’s not just talking about the lines on his face. This Old Dog’s opening “My Old Man” confirms what fans might have long guessed: DeMarco’s worried about turning into his dad. It’s known DeMarco’s father abandoned his family to disappear into booze and drugs. His debut LP, 2, featured an ode to cigarettes with the refrain “ I’ll smoke you ’til I’m dying.” One of the most quoted lyrics from sophomore album, Salad Days, was “ What mom don’t know is taking its toll on me.” On his latest This Old Dog, he rephrases it, just barely: “ There’s a price tag hanging off of having all that fun.” But through his music, all he can really think about is what all that hedonism might do to him.
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Mac DeMarco likes to party-that’s a fact nearly as well-known as his music.