The lack of pretense - maybe it’s born of his Canadian upbringing, or maybe he’s just long term a beneficiary of the chillwave sham - makes DeMarco seem like a low-stakes proposition. Just look at the guy tell stories while eating chicken and milk: He evinces a “What - Me Worry?” attitude like a similarly gap-toothed avatar of jocular pranksterism before him. DeMarco is not serious and he is funny, but more importantly, he’s casual. What else should a close confidante expect? This ease with the ridiculous is essential for Life With Mac. It was an inside joke that doubled as a public act of meme-ing. Earlier this week DeMarco surprised his bandmate Jon Lent when he revealed to him a Los Angeles–area billboard with Lent’s face plastered on it, nominally promoting This Old Dog. He seemed so impish and thrilled to be upending a system that’s been broken for decades. He grinned devilishly onstage while sporting a broad straw hat with a band covered in palm trees, clutching a cigarette between two fingers of one hand and a beer in the other. “Soulseek!” he mock-shouted, a real millennial goof if there ever was one. At Coachella this year, he alerted fans that his new album had leaked on the internet and began listing all the illegal (and in some cases defunct) places people should go to steal it. At the end of the instrumental, he delivered the exact location, inviting listeners to “Stop on by - I’ll make you a cup of coffee.” Many did just that. He’s antic, a troublemaker performing some sweet social experiment.ĭeMarco quite famously shared the address of his home in Far Rockaway, Queens, on a 2015 song. His life and career are an object of fascination on Reddit, and the reasons why are obvious. And he is an uncommonly popular denizen of the internet. He is championed by a specific brand of bro. His albums sell well enough, given their overhead. Indie rock - a meaningless, iterative phrase that was once used on the internet to delineate “not major label” and then “artful and serious” and then “commodify me, please” - has been in a vague moment of silent crisis for years now. Influence is a messy thing for an artist working in what feels like an antiquated form. This Old Dog has drawn comparisons to the music of ’70s bards, like James Taylor (if you favor the fragile emotionalist), Harry Nilsson (if you favor the wry romantic), Randy Newman (if you favor the wry fatalist), and Neil Young (if you favor the fragile fatalist - or if you’re DeMarco, who explicitly cites Harvest as an influence). They sound like they’ve been recorded in a room decorated with fun-house mirrors. There’s something slightly off, something rounded and strange about these songs.
Mac demarco this old dog instrumentals mac#
Released Friday, it bears all the hallmarks of a Mac DeMarco album - a curious combination of plainspoken cliché (“Wishin’ for tomorrow today / She still says she’s true”) and subtly clever turns of phrase (“My heart still beats for you / even though you don’t feel it”), wrapped in notes that bend and quiver. Mac DeMarco’s new album, his third full-length, is called This Old Dog.