Album Review: This Old Dog, Mac DeMarco
My first listen to Mac DeMarco's third album was honestly a bit underwhelming. When I think Mac, I think crazy, trippy, weird music that matches his personality. This album was slower-paced, more acoustic, and didn't have the same DeMarco touch his first two albums had.
However, my next few listens opened my ears to what it was about this album that made it: the growth. There's a certain sense of maturity in the album that was missing from the first two, stemming from his age and relationships.
In the first song, "My Old Man", he sings about how he sees his father when he looks in the mirror. DeMarco's alcoholic father was absent from the grand majority of his life and was not someone he looked up to. As he realizes he is beginning to look like his father, he feels unsettled.
This theme carries through the last two songs as he sings about how his father was recently very ill. "Moonlight on the River" contains DeMarco's thoughts on how he feels about his relationship with his father. "It's so strange deciding how I feel about you/it ain't like I ain't used to going on without you". DeMarco doesn't know what to feel because his father was absent, and they'd never really kept in touch. "Watching Him Fade Away" has the finality of these feelings; things may be sad if he passes away, but life won't change much.
There are of course a few love songs, most likely inspired by long time girlfriend Kiera "Kiki" McNally. DeMarco speaks up about writing love songs in a long term relationship in a recent interview with The Guardian.
“I think that just being in love – being out of love, being in love, being confused by love, wanting love, not wanting love, being scared of love – it doesn’t matter which. There are so many things better than feeling nothing at all. Long-term relationships are like a fucking mountainscape, you know? Things go up, things go down. That’s the fun of it.”
The rest of the album has a positive tone to it, encouraging the listener to move on from the past ("Dreams from Yesterday") and be themselves ("A Wolf Who Wears Sheep's Clothes"). The songs all flow together well, and don't feel detached while the album plays through.
Rate: 8/10
Favorite tunes: "Still Beating", "On the Level"
