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NEWS
MUSIC
MAC DEMARCO
O
n
This Old Dog
, Mac DeMarco is still his
eccentric, affable self – but for an album
which revolves around the spectre of his
absent father, it’s definitely his most personal
record yet. Although there isn’t anything as
bald as the spoken invitation at the end of
his previous release
Another One
(in which
he gave out his NewYork home address and
encouraged fans to pop over for
a mug of joe) there is one small
identifier. “There’s no secret message
per se,” he says, “But there is just
a little voice recording I have of my
dad… it’s a little sweet treat.”
Beautiful single
My Old Man
seems full of filial resignation, right
down to its chorus hook: “Oh no,
looks like I’m seeing more of my old
man in me,” DeMarco sings, with
the melody dropping as resolutely as
shrugged shoulders falling back into place. But
DeMarco says there’s no deliberate symbolism.
“It was a funny thing with that song,” he says.
“I had the drum machine running, and those
little toms are doing the ‘do-do-do’, and that
[tonic note] was the only one that I could tune
those toms to be at. So I just started playing,
and I just kind of sang, and the lyrics probably
came in five minutes. I think that’s why I kept it
though: it was like ‘Eh, that just popped out, so
why not?’”
Most of what he does isn’t planned, he
says, and that goes beyond musical decisions
too. The album contains several romantic
tracks (one’s even titled
One More Love Song,
almost as if he's apologising for the repeated
INTERVIEW
T
he huge ambition and musical
scope of
Mellon Collie and the
Infinite Sadness
– the third studio
album fromThe Smashing Pumpkins
– encapsulates so many enormous
themes and secret details that cult
fandom quickly crawled across the
world upon its release in 1995.
According to artist John Craig
(speaking to NPR in 2012), frontman
Billy Corgan had many scribbled ideas
for the images he wanted depicted in
the album’s booklet: animals, seraphic
figures, alchemic symbols, and bucolic
Victorian-era scenes with strange
juxtapositions. Craig, a collage artist
who works with “lost and vintage
imagery”, created sample artwork
based on doodles Corgan faxed to
him, and was given the cover job.
Mellon Collie
’s cover art is an
assemblage of pieces from different
sources, which Craig composited
using a colour photocopier. “It's the
CSI
of album covers,” he said. ”With
any collage piece, I'm always trying all
the possibilities. It's almost like one of
those changing heads books, where
you move the eyes and nose until you
get what you want."
The cosmic background Craig lifted
from an old children’s encyclopedia,
the star from a magazine whiskey ad,
the woman’s body from Raphael's
Saint Catherine of Alexandria
(1508),
and her head from Jean-Baptise
Greuze’s
The Souvenir (Fidelity)
(1789). The alt-rock masterpiece
reached #1 in several countries
(including Australia) and earned seven
Grammy nominations.
ZKR
WHAT'S THE
STORY?
We have a look back at the
fascinating tales behind some
of our favourite album covers.
This month:
Mellon Collie
And The Infinite Sadness,
The
Smashing Pumpkins
(1995)
T
his month we shot the
breeze with Pond's Jay
Watson, Amy Shark, Alex from
Bad//Dreems, Sheryl Crow,
L.A. Takedown's Aaron Olson,
that mug Mac DeMarco (right),
and even a couple more which
you can find on the
STACK
site. Giant releases include
Gorillaz, Kendrick Lamar, Tim
Rogers and Aldous Harding.
Jambalaya!
Zo
ë
Radas (Music Editor)
theme); DeMarco attests he never meant for
his relationship with girlfriend Kiera McNally to
become so public, or for listeners to consider
every tender lyric as a rumination on their union.
“She’s a big part of my life, and I write about
my life,” he explains. “It’s this persona that I’ve
created for myself, but it’s not like I premeditate
anything.” He reflects it back again, with: “It’s
not up to me what people gravitate to,
either. But they seem to like her, and
she doesn’t seem to mind.”
This Old Dog
’s instrumentation
follows the elastic, adventitious style of
the Canadian native’s previous works,
with briny guitars that wash or pluck
their way across benevolent chord
changes, more preset organ-like beats
(as on
Dreams FromYesterday
and
My Old Man
), as well as the familiar
sideslip of gentle, wonky keys. “When
you’re working with an electronic instrument,
it’s electricity," DeMarco says, and barks out a
monotone noise to describe the static. “Anything
you can do to make the sound a bit more alive
is better, to me. Woozy, out of tune. It sounds
better to me.”
The spoken “sweet treat” appears at the end
of penultimate track
Moonlight On The Water
,
which clocks in at several minutes longer than
the album’s other cuts with a long jam in its
belly. But during this tour – many shows of which
will incorporate DeMarco’s bud and Melbourne’s
own odd darling Kirin J Callinan – the musician
says there’ll be room to manoeuvre. “We’ll jack
around a little bit,” he smiles. “We’ll have some
fun with it.”
ZKR
This Old Dog
by Mac DeMarco
is out May 5 via
Remote Control.