mac demarco

i kinda like Real Estate's "no frontman" vibe (despite having a pretty clear would-be frontman). i saw them once at a festival and the lazy haze they emanated was a neat sensory complement to all the sunstroke going round.

personality makes sense, i suppose there's a lovable everyman quality he's got going that goes a long way with a bit of stagemanship (which makes the invitation for coffee at his place perfectly on-brand). still a bit confused as to how that opens him up to a bigtime teen/young 20s audience when the other things those demos seem to be loving are FKA twigs, Jamie xx and Diplo, but now that i like a couple Mac records i'll try to catch him if he ever makes it to this part of the world.

i think he's written a bunch of memorable, poppy songs, and that his popularity is somewhat based on that, and is not that puzzling. it's also not like he's incredibly huge, he's playing here (vancouver - bear in mind that he's canadian and used to live here) at a venue with a capacity of under a thousand people. he's not selling out stadiums or anything, just regular, indie rock famous.

i feel like he's more than regular indie rock famous but obvs not full balls out celeb famous? like my youngest sister isn't really into anything "indie" but has his albums on her ipod

venue he's playing in mtl is over 2k capacity, surprised he wouldn't play somewhere bigger in the west coast

@flopson otm, it's not the size of his audience that surprises me as much as who's in it. nowadays i'd expect his shtick to be drawing at best 500 to 1k people in their mid or late 20s ands up, but he gets into spaces more than double that size and my friend's younger sister plays hookie with a bunch of her friends to be there (and they're kids who scarcely know or care about pitchfork or any music crit).

anyway. nbd really, and like i said it's pretty cool that it's happening. just something i haven't totally wrapped my head around

to put it simply:

i think kids just still relate to a dirty looking guy making cheap records in his basement and getting wasted five minutes before showtime.

can remember seeing mac well before his rise to fame (and before 2 came out) and he had everybody in the palm of his hands

it's something obtainable in comparison to the high-fashion publicity machine of something like FKA Twigs

If I was famous enough that it's not a hindrance to my daily life I wouldn't mind inviting fans for coffee for an hour or two every monday. I'm not a morning person though so people should visit from 11am to 1pm and leave.

You could even select them prior visit, just have them send you an email with their data and fix a date.

When I was living in Madrid I had an online profile at couchsurfing for people to crash at my appartment downtown for a night or two and I never had any problem. it was cool having strangers for dinner or a couple of drinks.

I wasn't dining them I was dining with them in case it was lost in translation.

pretty crazy that he's giving people an open invitation/free license, though. i foresee reading an interview next album cycle where he's complaining about the weirdos who kept showing up at 3am or whatever

This strikes me as a funny modern version of Dylan going out to meet Woody Guthrie after hitting New York. I guess they were the damn dirty hipsters of their day, weren't they...

to put it simply:

i think kids just still relate to a dirty looking guy making cheap records in his basement and getting wasted five minutes before showtime.

^ what made him a horror during Pitchfork Festival.

I wandered into his set at Bonnaroo while he giving a few songs to his goofball guitarist. Couldn't really make heads or tails of the whole scene. I stayed for a few of Mac's own songs too, and they were fine. Definitely seemed like he was selling this whole zany package rather than just the music. Like an indie-rock Primus or something.

Primus comparison is spot-on.

I enjoyed the last two albums, but his Pitchfork performance was embarrassing.

srsly with that shirt and his mannerisms he looked and sounded like the singer of a telenovela theme from the mid eighties

these are all things that imo further obfuscate his appeal, not explain it...just another of mac's many riddles that keep him in our hearts

Xp lol alfred

i played a shitty loft show with makeout videotape like 5 or 6 years and they were pretty wasted. i only saw him play as mac demarco once at a free show and the venue was packed to the gills with euphoric crowdsurfing teens. i left after 2 songs cause there was no oxygen and i felt old but the sound was perfectly fine and he seemed sober

makeout videotape was the best thing he did imo

feel like it had more of the Women-esque canadian noise rock thing going on. and then he switched it up to be in with the trends

anybody who likes his songwriting but wishes it wasn't so soft and lackadaisical,

check out "Ying Yang"

I like the last thing he put out, it was just a set of instrumentals, had a strong McCartney I vibe to it. It's funny because as trashy/dirty as his image is the songs always sound really clean and professional. It was just a bunch of 3-chord 3-minute demos like you do when you are writing and you just make up a chord progression and work on it for a few hours.

i find the recordings pretty sloppy actually. also re: the comment above that he should "get a drummer" he plays drums himself on the recordings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=195&v=ghGUZvcEHew

Funny dude. Strong Paul Scheer vibe. Probably cause of the gap teeth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=195&v=ghGUZvcEHew

here's an embed

or not

Last year's left me cold. This one, I like. Weird.

^ ditto. he's a great songwriter/producer

this dude is pretty cool, like funky west coast kurt vile. i'm down.

there's something good about this guy but there's also something about him I don't like, his smug mug and the way it comes through in his songs

a friend who knew him growing up in edmonton said he was kind of full of himself but ultimately a nice enough kid and a bit crazy

god, man. 2 is such a melancholic re-listen. also one of the best albums of this decade.

the one he put out last year, 'Another One', is by far his best imo. the songs are great but it's produced so well, dude is becoming a really skilled engineer... 2 sounds really thin compared to Another One... it augurs well for his next record. dude gets a lot of hate - friend of mine (gen x) derisively refers to him as the 'chillwave Billy Joel' - but even if you don't dig the songs, he's not only a meme or one trick pony...

yeah, i never thought of him as a meme or anything. maybe the personality plays into it? but when you have that much talent i don't think you can sorta just "sell things" on your personality. he's just a very talented songwriter at the end of the day.

apparently he just finished a new album. really excited for it.

https://66.media.tumblr.com/a13bbf712d363096c1b80f06ced2f59f/tumblr_nwygvvN8AG1slv4a7o1_500.jpg

he's a cartoon character, he can be identified thru silhouette: oxford shirt, floppy hat, cigarette. it's the most you could ask for in a career as a singer/songwriter. i don't think he ever put much thought into his 'look' w/r/t marketing, he organically became a fashion/lifestyle icon for younger millennials. i see people all the time that copped his style. and yes they do dig his songs. stoked to hear his new record

great style looking like a random dad at anytime in the 90s. or suburban parents having a night out at the baseball game. this is normcore, i take it? yawwwwwwn

anyways i thought his style was wearing a sweater under a pair of half-buttoned overalls?

overthinking plus generalizing, there. it's just a dude wearing some simple gear. unlike you know... ninety percent of frilly indie bands from the last decade in beards and ironed dress shirts.

kurt cobain was such a dad!

mac will be a great dad, one day. i think.

cobain was an anti-capitalist grandpa

mac demarco has had a similar effect on fashion proportional to his popularity as kurt cobain did. it's not just normcore, it's a very specific: shapeless baseball cap, cigs, fuckin long t-shirts, and vans. not knocking him, this isn't the sort of thing you can plan or work toward, sometimes it just happens. he's a meme by his own admission.

cigarettes being trendy i never thought i'd see the day.

yeah, i could make a bunch of comparisons between kurt and mac that would probably piss a lot of people off. but you know... non-affected-ness, genuine spirit. yadda yadda. of course people are gonna look up to the dude and dress like him. he doesn't gvie a fuck.

think he's pretty anti-capitalistic too for the most part. at least what i've gleamed from interviews.

(the baseball caps are dumb as shit on most people, i will add)

http://dontpaniconline.com/media/magazine/660x420/e0fa7bb4188914e6d3b127c3fe99a34f.jpg

http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f367/SirDrexl/OriolesCap.jpg

im with you hackshaw, there are a lot of similarities, and a similar sense of intimacy/you feel like you know him...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ezl_aqFdwbI/hqdefault.jpg

http://pitchfork.com/news/59230-mac-demarco-just-finished-mixing-the-new-disc/

who's that dude with him? looks like richard d james

That's shags chamberlain, part of a pink's touring band

oh word, is he the drummer that wears the big russian hat?

a more acoustic album would be so good, actually. there's a bunch of fan curated ones on youtube that are good enough though. killer vocalist even with the cigarette abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtQ7oXXykSM