Mac DeMarco - This Old Dog (CD)

Before you ancients out there turn your heads and scoff at the premise of a 20-something rock-and-roll goofball calling himself an old-anything, consider this: said perpetrator, he who answers to the name Mac DeMarco, has spent the better part of his time thus far writing, recording, and releasing an album of his own music pretty much every calendar flip, and pretty much on his own. The fresh meat you're now feasting on, This Old Dog, makes for his fifth in just over half a decade - bringing the total to 3 LPs and 2 EPs. According to the DMV, Mac is 26. But in working-dog years, he could easily qualify for social security. To stay gold, turns out all he needed was some new tricks.

DeMarco wrote some demos for This Old Dog on an acoustic guitar, an unusual yet eye-opening method for him. He also attributes some of the delay to his exploration of new gear he'd purchased, specifically a CR-78 drum machine, which he used while writing and can be heard on his album tracks for the first time ever. "That thing helped a ton, especially for demoing," he says. "It's on the album a lot, maybe four or five songs. I usually demo on a drum machine and then record real drums, but I liked that machine so much I kept it on the album. The majority of this album is acoustic guitar, synthesizer, some drum machine, and one song is electric guitar. So this is a new endeavor for me."