“When I was making ‘This Old Dog,’ I was thinking, I don’t have a choice, I’m shackled to the path that my father has cut. That’s not true. His passing away was a relief in a lot of ways. For me, making music was always either about impressing girls, acceptance from my peers, or revenge against my father. Now one of those just gets ticked off, washed away.”

In 2021, DeMarco’s father died of cancer. Four years earlier, DeMarco had made a record, “This Old Dog,” about their stifled, anemic relationship. “I didn’t know him very well,” DeMarco said. “He was a heavy drug-and-alcohol user. His body was slowly shutting down for seven years or something. There were a lot of times he would go into the hospital and we’d be, like, ‘Well, see ya.’ Then he’d get out. When he was passing away, I tried to—not heal it, but I got him an iPad, and, even when I was speaking with him a lot, he had this attitude of ‘Why are you doing this? Really? You wanna call me again today?’ ” DeMarco went on, “I don’t know why I did it. It would’ve been cool to understand more about where I came from. It’s almost an animalistic thing—that’s my blood.” Yet DeMarco said that when his and McNally’s tabby cat, Pickles, died, in 2023, he felt a more acute grief. “It’s crazy to even say that out loud: I knew the cat way better than I knew my dad.”

“This Old Dog” is a beautiful and emotionally charged album. On “My Old Man,” a mournful folk song with a jaunty synthesizer beat, he reckons with the inevitability of genetics. “Uh-oh, looks like I’m seeing more of my old man in me,” he sings, his voice low.

“I was at a point where I was, like, ‘Fuck you, I’ll write this record about you, motherfucker.’ Would I do that now? I don’t think so,” he said. “When I was making ‘This Old Dog,’ I was thinking, I don’t have a choice, I’m shackled to the path that my father has cut. That’s not true. His passing away was a relief in a lot of ways. For me, making music was always either about impressing girls, acceptance from my peers, or revenge against my father. Now one of those just gets ticked off, washed away.”

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