Mac DeMarco

Mac DeMarco's music is inextricably linked to his warmly weird personality, with his distinctive songwriting style and warped production sound mirroring his off-kilter charm and apparent laid-back look on life. While the Canadian artist's image projects a low-key slacker prone to occasional antics and never taking anything too seriously, his breezy songs ironically often hide mature themes of aging, commitment, and morals under layers of chorus and reverb. Early releases on Captured Tracks and endless touring enlarged DeMarco's fan base, and the 2014 album Salad Days pushed his strange mix of slacker pop, jazz, '70s soft rock, and glam into the vanguard realm, performing well commercially and changing the shape of what was happening in indie rock at the time. Subsequent moves to New York and Los Angeles each yielded quality releases on which the multi-instrumentalist DeMarco became known for playing and recording all the parts himself. His 2017 album This Old Dog explored themes of getting older, this time with upgraded production, a trend that continued on 2019's Here Comes the Cowboy, which he released on his own imprint. In 2023, DeMarco issued both the entirely instrumental album Five Easy Hot Dogs and One Wayne G, a collection of 199 pieces of music that clocked in at a run time of close to nine hours.

Mac DeMarco was born Vernor Winfield MacBriare Smith IV in 1990, and grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. He first emerged from complete obscurity under the moniker Makeout Videotape. Immediately after finishing high school in the summer of 2008, DeMarco moved from his hometown to the warmer climes of Vancouver and self-released Heat Wave, a collection of songs he wrote and recorded while bored and listless in his new surroundings. The limited run of CDs soon sold out, and Makeout Videotape ambled into the live performance realm with the inclusion of additional players Alex Calder and Jen Clement. The band quickly gained regional recognition, signing to Unfamiliar Records and going on tour with labelmates Japandroids in the fall of 2009.

Makeout Videotape continued to perform locally and regionally as well as release new songs both digitally and physically throughout the next few years. DeMarco also began assembling a bevy of strangely psychedelic videos during this time, all baffling, and some even pertaining to the band. In an abrupt switch-up, he moved to Montreal in 2011, dropping the group in favor of a solo career. In early 2012 he signed to the Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks, and shortly thereafter released his debut mini-album, Rock and Roll Night Club, under his own name. While not completely divorced from the jangly, glazed-over pop of Makeout Videotape, the new set of songs had a darker tone, and vague themes of androgyny and late-night loneliness shared space on the set list with goofy Ween-like moments. Mere months after the four-track-recorded Rock and Roll Night Club, the more cohesive and adult follow-up 2 appeared. Critics and music lovers alike took to DeMarco's sound, and he spent much of the following year on tour and in performance before releasing his next album, Salad Days, in the spring of 2014.

DeMarco's popularity grew immensely with constant international touring, leading to the commercial release of the demos for both 2 and Salad Days. Following a lengthy tour supporting his breakout LP, DeMarco returned to his seaside home in Queens to record the mini-LP Another One, which arrived in August 2015. Like several of his previous releases, Another One was quickly followed by an accompanying online-only release, this time in the form of the instrumental self-described "BBQ soundtrack" Some Other Ones. A cross-country move to Los Angeles marked a slight change in tone for DeMarco's quieter, more introspective third full-length, This Old Dog, which came out in 2017. Old Dog Demos, a 15-track set that featured demos on the A-side and instrumentals from This Old Dog on the B-side, appeared in 2018. Ending his tenure with longtime record label Captured Tracks, DeMarco announced that his next album would be on his own imprint, Mac's Record Label. His inaugural release and fourth proper album, Here Comes the Cowboy, appeared in May 2019 and was followed by lengthy tours of North America and Europe.

The 2023 outing Five Easy Hot Dogs was a different kind of album for DeMarco, consisting entirely of instrumental pieces recorded in transit. Written on a road trip and recorded day to day with a makeshift recording setup, the various songs on the album were named after the cities they were created in. Five Easy Hot Dogs was released in January 2023, and just a few months later, in April, DeMarco released the surprisingly lengthy One Wayne G, a collection of 199 largely instrumental songs recorded between 2018 and 2023. Despite its lengthy run time and an extremely casual approach to the majority of the sketch-like tracks, One Wayne G still broke into the upper tier of the Billboard 200 chart, reaching as high as number 56. In November of that year, DeMarco re-released his 2015 instrumental project Some Other Ones, taking the breezy, summer-ready collection out of digital obscurity and bringing it to both streaming services and a limited vinyl run for the first time. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi