Spectreview: Mac Demarco – Here Comes the Cowboy

-LIGHT SLATE BLUE-

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“Choo choo
Take a ride with me”

He hasn’t said it publicly, but Mac Demarco wants you to hate his new record. Recent interviews have shown the 30-year-old in depressed fits of ennui and frustration, internally fighting with his role as indie rock’s court-jester-turned-prince (and the repercussions of the cult following that comes with it). Given that Demarco has a history of transparency compared to most of his peers in the entertainment industry, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Here Comes The Cowboy reflects this mentality, the moment when Demarco’s anxieties about disenfranchisement and world-weariness he expressed so pointedly in his earlier works would finally reach him. It’s not a new story in rock history (plenty of artists from Lindsey Buckingham to Alex Chilton to Eddie Vedder have experienced creative or career fatigue, dabbling in artistic self-destruction), but for Demarco the move is particularly telegraphed; it’s what he’s been singing about since he became a indie superstar. To his credit, he takes purposeful measures to ensure Here Comes The Cowboy is at least among the least treasured albums of his oeuvre, extending the narcotic mantra of the opening title track for far too long and jamming a bewildering, flaccid funk track (“Choo Choo”) halfway into the album.

What’s disappointing about the album, in a way Demarco perhaps didn’t plan for, is how tuneful the rest of these tracks remain, as if their inclusion shows how conflicted he is about actually torching his career. Songs like the subdued “Nobody” and the Bacharach-leaning “On The Square” are completely free of the griminess of his lower-fi recordings and cast a fragile light on his signature songwriting tricks that reads as genuinely novel, while his knack for coloring straightforward love songs with tenderness and poignancy (“K”) is still evident here. Even the album’s tongue-through-cheek closer “Baby Bye Bye” is a surprisingly ambitious assemblage of parts for someone known for being a slacker, even if it draws a negative comparison to “A Day in the Life.” The fact that he attempts to hammer the point across by reiterating “Choo Choo” as a hidden track, albeit with a strikingly pretty refrain, is proof enough that Demarco, deep down, would like to stay in his audience’s graces. It could be a lack of focus, or a tragic internal conflict at work, or maybe even just laziness, but it’s his decision to pursue apparent career immolation in half-measures that ultimately sink the album. Not quite Big Star’s Third, not quite Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, Here Comes The Cowboy is a fascinating yet deeply flawed work from an artist choosing to operate at 50%, where operating at 0% could have potentially yielded greater successes.

Recommended (or not) for diehards or curios alike.