That makes it the riskiest album of his young career because a dark Mac DeMarco album seems like a contradiction in terms. Still, it’s shocking to hear him admit on “Still Beating,” against the sort of noodly soft-rock guitar lope that has become his trademark, “Honey, I cry too/ You better believe it.” In the official bio distributed along with This Old Dog, DeMarco states, “One of the main goals for this record was trying to make sure I retained some kind of realness,” which apparently means facing his dark side head-on.

So even if you weren’t familiar with DeMarco’s complicated family history - specifically his strained relationship with his absentee father, discussed in various interviews over the years - you could probably ascertain that his class clown persona masked some deep emotional wounds. We need not run down the long connection between comedians and depression - “ But doctor… I am Pagliacci” and all that. And it may be an antidote for his goofball exploits if, like me, you often find that stuff obscuring his formidable songwriting talent. Both in terms of sound and subject matter, the album finds DeMarco beginning to venture beyond the music he built his carefree indie bro reputation on. But This Old Dog, either his third or fifth album depending on how you want to classify mini-LPs Rock And Roll Night Club and Another One, really does present something like a mature version of the DeMarco - surprising for a guy whose “onstage antics have spanned from hoisting his longtime girlfriend Kiera onto his shoulders mid-song to performing a U2 cover nude with a drumstick up his butt,” as a new Pitchfork feature explains it. Not that you’d mistake this album for the work of anyone but Mac DeMarco, or that “ indie rock’s loveable laid-back prince,” who turned 27 Sunday, is old by most metrics.

Mac demarco this old dog autograph