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Alex G Mac Demarco
Like the days of Steely Dan, Harry Nilsson or Prince releasing a classic every year (or less) comes Mac DeMarco’s Another One, a mini-LP announced almost one year to the date of the meteorically successful Salad Days. Conceived and recorded entirely by himself in a short period between a relentless tour schedule at his new place in Far Rockaway, Queens, Another One is eight, freshly written songs, expanding the arsenal of Mac’s already impressive catalog. There’s a bittersweet, romantic sensibility present. The overall feeling is lost love, or perhaps love never found, yet Mac embraces this without making it an overly somber experience for the listener. It’s at times haunting and warm, and a bit more refined and sophisticated, but still plenty playful, retaining the guts and soul of classic Mac.
With two full-length albums and two EPs released and hundreds of sold out shows performed in the last several years, a recent late night television debut on Conan following a special guest performance on The Eric Andre Show, it seems as Mac DeMarco nears his 25th birthday, he’s outgrowing any sort of slacker stigma. As expected, he’ll continue to tour extensively in support of Another One, further connecting with his ever-inspired fanbase, whether in New York City, Tel Aviv, Brazil or Australia.
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Mac DeMarco was born Vernor Winfield MacBriare Smith IV, on April 30, 1990, in Duncan, British Columbia. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Edmonton, Alberta, where Mac spent the rest of his adolescence.
Another One is out August 7th on Captured Tracks.
I’ve never been a Mac DeMarco guy. Maybe I’ve been missing out.
I don’t think I’ve ever really Gotten It when it comes to his music because it presents a confluence of elements I don’t enjoy – heaps of chorus pedals, meandering psych-rock tempos, and a public persona that straddles the divide between “loose unit” and “batshit insane” into infinity. It’s fine – not all music is for all people, and up until now I’d accepted my fate as someone who just wasn’t going to find Mac DeMarco enjoyable.
Then I saw him play live.
Tbh it was kind of unintentional - I hit the front row of his Laneway set for triple j with the intent of securing some #prime #internet #content and then G’n TFO of there.
But then I stayed. I stayed of my own volition, and I did it because I really enjoyed it. Yes, they look, as Lewis Hobba so eloquently described it on the radio this afternoon, “half like [they] belong in the 70s, and half like [they] belong in Street Fighter”, but I got the vibe all wrong. Mac’s not a space cadet: he’s a maverick – and that distinction is important because one implies weird for the sake of being weird or weird-via-being-too-cooked, and the other implies an embrace of the unconventional because you think differently.
There’s a whole discourse about how this most recent DeMarco record, This Old Dog, is supposed to mark his foray into Maturity, shedding his spattered snakeskin and embracing adult stuff like Growing Up and also Getting Old in a way that I would posit is supposed to set him up for a long and successful career as a revered and beloved serious songwriter.
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Smash cut to Anderson.Paak and his entire band The Free Nationals, sitting stage right, at a great big fold-up table during Mac’s set. They’re scoring each song out of 10 with textas and cardboard placards. Maturity be damned – it was really fun.
But what I realised at the mainstage in Mill Park tonight is that the songs have always been there, and they’ve always been good.
Earlier cuts from records like Salad Days and 2 are flatly fantastic – ‘Viceroy’ and the titular ‘Salad Days’ come to mind. They’re full of chorus, sure, but also full of life. The new stuff sees DeMarco don his acoustic guitar, but it’s a cosmetic change rather than a cosmic one. These are all really good pop songs.
He’s playing slow, jangly love ballads – ballads! – and crowds full of bulked dudes (who may or may not be there because they’ve seen a picture of him drinking out of a shoe) are eating out of the palm of his hand up the front of the crowd. Up the back it’s different, people care less generally, but that’s Festivals for ya, more than anything else.
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So consider this my Come To Jesus moment when it comes to Mac DeMarco: I think he’s good, and I think I was wrong not to look past the surface level. I think I might even go see him again when I go to Laneway as a punter later on in the festival’s run.