‘Choo Choo’: how Mac DeMarco soundtracked youth’s escape from the city
As the music of Mac DeMarco shows, there’s a world of difference between the joy of escapism and the depressing reality of the actual escape. One thinks that all you need to do to bring magic and joy back into your humdrum life is get the first train to somewhere bright, shiny and new. Forget about your old life and jump into a world of adventure and fulfilment!
The songs of the Canadian slacker-pop hero speak to this fantasy—blissed-out, hook-filled, yet charmingly rickety guitar pop suffused with adult insouciance and childlike wonder. Yet, there’s a darkness to it too. Scratch the surface of any DeMarco song, and you’ll find that they come from a man barely holding it together. Which is basically what he has in common with anyone born after 1985.
His music doesn’t just encompass the joy of escape; it also encompasses the reality of that world of “adventure” and “fulfilment”. Where you run out of money in a grimy hotel in a seaside town you’ve never been to, living off Ginsters pasties and realising how good you had it before. To be clear, this is not a criticism of his music.
In fact, I think it explains the astonishing success of someone who has seemingly never done anything to seek success in his life. His work chimes with the feelings of a generation of people freshly out of old adolescence, newly arrived in plain old adulthood, who still feel like overgrown children. Despite our growing years, we have none of the signifiers of the ripening age afforded to previous generations.
Unless we have rich parents, we’re as likely to own property on Pluto as we are on Earth. The very idea of a steady career is a concept as genuinely ludicrous as bringing kids into a world that’s pretty much a cesspit. On a very real level, the idea of trying is outdated. You won’t get anywhere, and you won’t achieve anything, so why bother? Just escape.
Get out of the city. Live sustainably and appreciate the little things. A book in front of a roaring fire, actual fresh air, starry skies, mornings spent waking up and actually doing what you want rather than doom-scrolling before squeezing yourself onto a packed-out bus for the old nine-to-five. It might all sound silly, but DeMarco himself has a song that reflects this feeling on his album Here Comes the Cowboy.
‘Choo Choo’, on the surface, is a novelty song. There are just 12 words used in this 160-second song. Seven of them are ”Choo choo / Take a ride with me” atop a ramshackle slice of sleazy 1970s funk. There’s even a steamboat whistle that goes off whenever “choo choo” chimes in, along with an incongruous gong. If someone played this to me, saying it’s a tune cut from season two of The Mighty Boosh, I’d have believed them.
Yet, the second line of this seemingly silly slice of childish whimsy is, “You can die with me”. This is where the other shoe drops, and the darkness inherent in not only the song but the very idea of escaping rears its head. We’re not dense. Deep down, we know the fantasy of living off the grid is just that, a fantasy. Just like having that family and career we want, we’ll never truly escape this circus without more luck than we’ll ever get. Still, dreaming about it passes the time, so off we go. “Choo choo”!
