Edmonton, AB · slacker rock · soft rock

Mac DeMarco

2 festivals played ↓

The gap-toothed prince of jangly slacker-pop — cigarette ballads and pure charm, goofball stage antics over genuinely tender songwriting.

Mac DeMarco was born on Vancouver Island in Duncan, British Columbia, and raised largely in Edmonton, Alberta. He was originally named Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV after his great-grandfather, a former Alberta cabinet minister, but his mother changed his name to Mac DeMarco after his father left the family. He learned guitar from his grandmother and played in several teenage bands.

He began releasing lo-fi recordings from Vancouver under the name Makeout Videotape, including the self-produced Heat Wave, which sold out its 500-unit pressing, and toured with Japandroids. After moving to Montreal in 2011 and taking work in medical trials and road paving to get by, he signed to Captured Tracks and released Rock and Roll Night Club under his own name in 2012.

His records since, among them 2, Salad Days, This Old Dog, Here Comes the Cowboy and later Five Easy Hot Dogs and Guitar, are built from loose, chorus-drenched guitar, unhurried tempos and a warm, slightly out-of-tune quality he once jokingly labelled "jizz jazz."

Songs such as "Ode to Viceroy," "My Kind of Woman" and "Chamber of Reflection" have become the pieces most listeners know him by, and much of his catalogue is self-recorded and self-produced at home. He started his own label, Mac's Record Label, in 2018. On stage he alternates between the loose sincerity of the songs and long stretches of joking with the crowd and his band.

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slacker rocksoft rock