Mac DeMarco w/ The Garden at The Carolina Theatre of Durham

Motorco and The Carolina Theatre of Durham present Mac DeMarco w/ The Garden at The Carolina Theatre of Durham

Indie rocker Mac DeMarco brings his U.S. tour to the Carolina Theatre on Monday, Sept. 25 (co-presented by Motorco, NS2 and The Carolina Theatre of Durham).

Tickets for this show start at $25 and go on sale Friday, April 7 at 10 a.m. at the Carolina Theatre Box Office, carolinatheatre.org and ticketmaster.com.

DeMarco's much-anticipated new album, This Old Dog, drops on May 5.

Mac DeMarco
Before you ancients out there turn your heads and scoff at the premise of a twenty-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, MacBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco is 26. But in working-dog years, ol’ Mac here could easily qualify for social security. To stay gold, turns out all he needed was some new tricks.

Though used to and pretty happy with that annual grind, 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 broader 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 (insert tooth joke here).

“This one was spaced out,” DeMarco says. “I demoed a full album, and as I was moving to the West Coast I thought I’d get to finishing it quickly. But then I realized that moving to a new city and starting a new life takes time. And it was weird, because usually I just write, record, and put it out; no problem. But this time, I wrote them and they sat. When that happens, you really get to know the songs. It was a different vibe.”

DeMarco wrote some demos for This Old Dog on an acoustic guitar, an unusual yet eye-opening method for him. “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.”

And from the outset, from the pops and clicks of the CR-78 and acoustic strums on the album-opening “My Old Man,” the synth-drenched beauty of the second track, “This Old Dog,” and that ironic recurring word itself, 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. In fact, DeMarco recognizes that he might share more than just a geographical flight-path with a certain Canadian-cum-Californian songwriter.

The Garden
Vada Vada! Wait, Vada Vada? Not only is "The Vada Vada" a dance (a Kabuki-like flailing of self provoking either the wrath or admiration from the now anachronistic form of sweaty, middle aged flesh) – and developed by twin brothers Wyatt and Fletcher Shears of the Southern California band The Garden – it's also the band's calling card. It's a genre. It's a song off their new record, The Life and Times of a Paperclip, out July 23rd on Burger Records. It's an all-encompassing philosophy of radical self-identity through hyperactivity, music, and monster movies. It's a way of life.
Twin brothers from Orange, California, Wyatt and Fletcher were born into the crashing wave of OC hardcore and, from the get-go, were instantly ahead of their time. The obligatory "scum punk" phase that most have in the later years of high school came and went for the brothers as fourth graders. And while the rest of their peers were first discovering The Dead Kennedys and Black Flag, the brothers Shears preferred the hostile and art damaged rhythms of Saccharine Trust, The Minutemen, and Killing Joke.

A result of two years of unbridled energy, The Garden present their new album, The Life and Times of a Paperclip: sixteen songs about inanimate objects, made up words, and declarations of inconsequence that leave you scratching your head and tapping your foot. It's a punk record. It's brooding and humorous, abstract and dense. Though, refreshingly, it's completely un-self aware. There's no wallowing in sad, reflective, wide-eyed introspection. The Garden don't have time for that. After all, the band's only working with a bass guitar and drum set here – their chosen tools of destruction are limiting in the best way, leaving room for only the stuff that hits the hardest and matters most.

From day one, the Shears brothers set out to make a great LP, and they succeeded. The Life and Times of a Paperclip is an invitation into their universe. It's a challenge. And it's one we should all accept.