Mac DeMarco’s new album, Here Comes The Cowboy (released May 10, on his own record label) is a pretty laid-back affair, with characteristically nonchalant vocals and slow, unfussy riffs. The same can’t be said of the title track’s video, though, which came out the same day but is way too strange to earn the same “laid-back” label.
Sure, “Here Comes The Cowboy” opens with a float on a lazy river: an idyllic image that fits with the guitar and vocals, which chug along as if they’ve got all the time in the world. What follows, though, is a plethora of disturbing, animated, alien-looking creatures, one strapped into a medical chair with a pained smile and bloodshot eyes. Cosy and relaxing it is not.
As the video moves on, that character in the chair is greeted by adoring fans (equally alien) and handed a microphone. There’s an analogy to DeMarco’s rise to slacker-pop royalty in there somewhere.
In among the crowds, versions of more well-known characters seem to pop up too. There’s a sheriff that looks a lot like Jim Carrey in The Mask, what seems to be an iteration of “That Yellow Bastard” from Frank Miller’s Sin City series, and a couple of Star Wars nods.
Once more, it’s all pretty odd, but you can watch below, if that’s your kind of thing. Or maybe read Dazed’s very relevant take on why cowboys – and all things yeehaw – seem to be taking over the music scene.
