STACK #151 May 2017

NEWS MUSIC

WHAT'S THE STORY? We have a look back at the fascinating tales behind some of our favourite album covers.

T his month we shot the breeze with Pond's Jay Watson, Amy Shark, Alex from Bad//Dreems, Sheryl Crow, L.A. Takedown's Aaron Olson, that mug Mac DeMarco (right), and even a couple more which you can find on the STACK site. Giant releases include Gorillaz, Kendrick Lamar, Tim Rogers and Aldous Harding. Jambalaya! Zo ë Radas (Music Editor)

T he huge ambition and musical scope of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – the third studio album fromThe Smashing Pumpkins – encapsulates so many enormous themes and secret details that cult fandom quickly crawled across the world upon its release in 1995. According to artist John Craig (speaking to NPR in 2012), frontman Billy Corgan had many scribbled ideas for the images he wanted depicted in the album’s booklet: animals, seraphic figures, alchemic symbols, and bucolic Victorian-era scenes with strange juxtapositions. Craig, a collage artist who works with “lost and vintage imagery”, created sample artwork based on doodles Corgan faxed to him, and was given the cover job. Mellon Collie ’s cover art is an assemblage of pieces from different sources, which Craig composited using a colour photocopier. “It's the CSI of album covers,” he said. ”With any collage piece, I'm always trying all the possibilities. It's almost like one of those changing heads books, where you move the eyes and nose until you get what you want." The cosmic background Craig lifted from an old children’s encyclopedia, the star from a magazine whiskey ad, the woman’s body from Raphael's Saint Catherine of Alexandria (1508), and her head from Jean-Baptise Greuze’s The Souvenir (Fidelity) (1789). The alt-rock masterpiece reached #1 in several countries (including Australia) and earned seven Grammy nominations. ZKR This month: Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, The Smashing Pumpkins (1995)

INTERVIEW

MAC DEMARCO O n This Old Dog , Mac DeMarco is still his

theme); DeMarco attests he never meant for his relationship with girlfriend Kiera McNally to become so public, or for listeners to consider every tender lyric as a rumination on their union. “She’s a big part of my life, and I write about my life,” he explains. “It’s this persona that I’ve created for myself, but it’s not like I premeditate anything.” He reflects it back again, with: “It’s

eccentric, affable self – but for an album which revolves around the spectre of his absent father, it’s definitely his most personal record yet. Although there isn’t anything as bald as the spoken invitation at the end of his previous release Another One (in which he gave out his NewYork home address and encouraged fans to pop over for a mug of joe) there is one small identifier. “There’s no secret message

not up to me what people gravitate to, either. But they seem to like her, and she doesn’t seem to mind.” This Old Dog ’s instrumentation follows the elastic, adventitious style of the Canadian native’s previous works, with briny guitars that wash or pluck their way across benevolent chord changes, more preset organ-like beats (as on Dreams FromYesterday and My Old Man ), as well as the familiar sideslip of gentle, wonky keys. “When

per se,” he says, “But there is just a little voice recording I have of my dad… it’s a little sweet treat.” Beautiful single My Old Man seems full of filial resignation, right down to its chorus hook: “Oh no, looks like I’m seeing more of my old man in me,” DeMarco sings, with the melody dropping as resolutely as

This Old Dog by Mac DeMarco is out May 5 via Remote Control.

shrugged shoulders falling back into place. But DeMarco says there’s no deliberate symbolism. “It was a funny thing with that song,” he says. “I had the drum machine running, and those little toms are doing the ‘do-do-do’, and that [tonic note] was the only one that I could tune those toms to be at. So I just started playing, and I just kind of sang, and the lyrics probably came in five minutes. I think that’s why I kept it though: it was like ‘Eh, that just popped out, so why not?’” Most of what he does isn’t planned, he says, and that goes beyond musical decisions too. The album contains several romantic tracks (one’s even titled One More Love Song, almost as if he's apologising for the repeated

you’re working with an electronic instrument, it’s electricity," DeMarco says, and barks out a monotone noise to describe the static. “Anything you can do to make the sound a bit more alive is better, to me. Woozy, out of tune. It sounds better to me.” The spoken “sweet treat” appears at the end of penultimate track Moonlight On The Water , which clocks in at several minutes longer than the album’s other cuts with a long jam in its belly. But during this tour – many shows of which will incorporate DeMarco’s bud and Melbourne’s own odd darling Kirin J Callinan – the musician says there’ll be room to manoeuvre. “We’ll jack around a little bit,” he smiles. “We’ll have some fun with it.” ZKR

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