Still, not demanding ambition doesn’t mean expecting slackness. Mac’s aforementioned charm rides at least partly on not giving a shit, so it’s either unfair or a misunderstanding (of whatever it was that has been responsible for giving him any appeal) to expect ambition.
#MAC DEMARCO THIS OLD DOG FIRST LISTEN MAC#
But those are best-case scenarios: it’s just as easy to imagine that Mac is covering his own songs in some insipidly accessible pseudo-bossa nova style in preparation for pitching them to the particular kind of cafe that, in my neck of the woods at least, seems to think its customers won’t be too distracted by such things.Ĭ. As a whole, then, it’s perfect for a “chill” BBQ or perhaps for blasting out into a deserted amphitheatre overgrown with weeds on a lazy summer’s day. Mac still uses his synths from time to time too, but he doesn’t seem to have found any new settings for them. And yet, with the possible exception of the very, very brief “Sister,” one doesn’t have the impression that he’s using the opportunities that this kind of instrumentation supposedly offer the musician (greater intimacy, humanity, spontaneity, and all those terrible things). What you’ll find here is a greater predominance of acoustic guitars compared to previous albums, even a harmonica, and there’s a real acoustic piano in the background on one song (the twangy, reverby electrics that used to be something of a personal signature are for the most part relegated to providing a little unobtrusive decoration). he’s drifting - deliberately, or just by not keeping his eyes open - closer and closer to the so-called middle of the so-called road, a dangerous zone that not many can survive unscathed. Of course, attempting to assess Mac DeMarco albums according to a metric of comparative “challenging”ness is a basic category mistake, yet nevertheless…. Despite having moments that tip it toward being his most “challenging” album lyrically (if being challenging has anything to do with being serious), This Old Dog might be his least interesting instrumentally and musically. Time to purge those superfluous watery humors by the eyes instead.ī. It might be too soon to say that Mac will never sing about cigarettes again or that the Mac of oozy pitched-down sleaze is gone forever, but they aren’t here at least.
This encounter with filial confusion - and not various other forms of “introspection,” like the uncertainty of getting older, weary-before-his-time stuff that have already been a feature of his work ( Salad Days’s title track, among many others) - is what’s thematically distinctive about This Old Dog.
The most prominent subject matter of this album is the at-the-time impending death of his mostly absent father (who has since recovered, a possibly awkward - or redemptive - fact that for us must remain external to the matter at hand), and the most noteworthy thing about this is the frank way Mac portrays his ambivalence about it. Here it is relevant, not least because Mac himself makes it so whether he means to or not.īut before we get too much further into that, it’s more useful, for now, to try to make a brief and provisional inventory of themes, sounds, etc.:Ī.
But whatever spiny issues surround questions of authenticity and personas - and clichés - there’s still something to be said in individual cases like this, even if the topic in general and as a whole is exhausted and some care has to be exercised in its invocation (and boy does it). It might not be worth going into exactly why - speaking only for myself - I might still be fool enough to not find it wholly undermined by the majority display of nonspecificity on This Old Dog it might even be worth wondering if those two factors aren’t in fact intrinsically related in the context of this album, as if its prevailing superficies of blandness is some kind of extended joke in keeping with Mac’s “fun-loving” persona, “goofy” as he is supposed to be. Mac has been coasting by on his inimitable charm for a while now, and for whatever reason, it still works on me to some extent - the charm, that is.
0 kommentar(er)
