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. ‘This Old Dog’ makes for his fifth in just over half a decade, bringing the total to three LPs and two EPs.

It was a little space – in time, location and method – that inspired DeMarco while making the record. Moving from his isolated Queens home to a house in Los Angeles helped give the somewhat transient Canada-native a base and a few more months on his calendar to create did their job as well. Arriving in California with a grip of demos he’d written in New York, he realized after a few months of setting up his new shop, complete with a few new toys, that the gap was giving him perspective.

Right off the bat, from the pops and clicks of the CR-78 drum machine and acoustic strums on the album-opening ‘My Old Man’, the synth-drenched beauty of the second track, ‘This Old Dog’, it’s clear that DeMarco’s bag is filled with new tricks indeed. ‘This Old Dog’ is rooted more in a synth-base than any of his previous releases but he is careful not to let that tactic overshadow the other instruments and overall ‘unplugged’ mood of the work: “This is my acoustic album, but it’s not really an acoustic album at all. That’s just what it feels like, mostly,” says DeMarco.

“DeMarco writes about life – both the heavy moments and the mundane ones – with economy and newfound grace.” – Pitchfork