Spotify<\/a> listeners each month, but he\u2019s left his hard-partying lifestyle behind. In conversation, he nowcuts an altogether more contemplative figure \u2013 without the slightly frayed, nicotinic air of old. One thing that hasn\u2019t changed, however, is his zeal for life on the road. \u201cI tell those young musicians: \u2018Don\u2019t you see? This is why!\u2019\u201d he says, his voice rising with the verve of a religious proselytiser. \u201cYou get to go on vacation with your friends indefinitely, hang out with new people every night and you\u2019re getting paid to do it! It\u2019s the ultimate adventure!\u201d<\/p>\nToday he\u2019s talking to me down the line from a farmhouse on British Columbia\u2019s Gulf Islands, where he\u2019s decamped with his girlfriend Kiera McNally to grease the wheels for his own next world tour. He recently helped his mother Agnes move to a new home in Victoria, and bought his own tumbledown place a couple of hours away to enjoy the tranquillity of what he calls \u201ca summer cabin kind of vibe\u201d. Soon, his bandmates will join him to start rehearsals. There\u2019s also a new album, Guitar, which he recorded alone at his home studio in Los Angeles in a fortnight and was initially just a pretence to get back touring. \u201cI just wanted to go out and perform,\u201d he says. \u201cWe could do that without releasing something, but I think that would make me feel like it was a reunion or greatest hits tour.”<\/p>\n
Guitar may have been written with live shows in mind, but there\u2019s nothing on it that remotely resembles a stadium rock anthem. Instead, DeMarco offers up a dozen spare, languid songs recorded with just guitar and drums, intimate paeans to the challenges of sobriety and the transformative magic of live music. \u201cThis album itself doesn\u2019t sound very rock\u2019n\u2019roll,\u201d he chuckles. \u201cBut it is, in essence. At this point, I just want to make something that feels right to me. I\u2019m not trying to make some kind of smash. I\u2019m deep enough in my career where I feel like I can make this kind of middle-aged, weird album.\u201d<\/p>\n
Songs such as \u201cRock and Roll\u201d and \u201cHoly\u201d are gentle, grooving meditations on music\u2019s electrifying power, while on dark lullaby \u201cTerror\u201d, DeMarco casts himself as a kind of disembodied spirit of rock stalking the Earth. \u201cHonestly, that song is sort of autobiographical about those old days,\u201d he explains. \u201cI want to be that wandering terror of rock\u2019n\u2019roll again, in a sense. I guess \u2018terror\u2019 sounds a bit derogatory, but I think in this instance maybe it\u2019s positive too. Rock\u2019n\u2019roll is inherently [about] terrorising, but also it f***ing rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even over the phone, it’s easy to picture DeMarco\u2019s boisterous, gap-toothed grin as he says this. In the 13 years since I first met and interviewed him, I can’t recall ever seeing him dressed in anything more formal than an old T-shirt and a crumpled dad cap. In 2014, when he was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize, Canada\u2019s equivalent of the Mercury Prize, he performed in dungarees. He’s dishevelled on a constitutional level \u2013 but that\u2019s always been part of his appeal.<\/p>\n
![\"Mac](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Mac-DeMarco-LeadHolyPhoto2.jpeg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Mac DeMarco: \u2018The music industry always wants you to play the bigger rock box, but the bigger rock box, I found, sucks\u2019 (Mac DeMarco)<\/p>\n
DeMarco was born in Duncan, British Columbia and raised by his mother in Edmonton, Alberta; after finishing high school he moved first to Vancouver and then to Montreal, where he found himself in the city\u2019s warehouse music scene, gaining attention with his jangly garage rock and the DIY surrealism of his homemade music videos. I was there for some of DeMarco\u2019s early shows in Canada and his London debut, and remember well the febrile, anything-could-happen energy that would crackle through the room whenever he took the stage. These days, he\u2019s more confident that his songs can stand on their own. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe could rock back in the day, but if s*** started going sideways then I\u2019d be like: \u2018Well, if I jump in the crowd, nobody\u2019s gonna remember the bad songs. They\u2019re just gonna remember me jumping in the crowd.\u2019 It worked like a charm!\u201d he remembers. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have been able to do a quiet show that was still impactful back then. I don\u2019t even know if I could sing like that. It just wouldn\u2019t have worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMarco mania arguably peaked around 2014\u2019s Salad Days, a woozy, psychedelic album of low-stress bops, anchored by DeMarco\u2019s mesmerically off-key guitar tuning. It was a time when his cult allure was so powerful he often found himself playing to rooms full of people dressed just like him.That record\u2019s dreamy, synth-like \u201cChamber of Reflection\u201d remains a mainstay on TikTok, and has been streamed almost a billion times. Even as his popularity swelled, DeMarco belied his slacker image by producing new work, entirely self-written and self-produced, at a reliable clip. 2015\u2019s keys-led Another One was followed by the more experimental This Old Dog in2017 and the McCartney-esque Here Comes The Cowboy in2019. <\/p>\n
\nI was trying to re-record everything, moving drum microphones around and building weird huts in my garage to change the sound… It got to the point where I was like, \u2018This is ridiculous\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Mac DeMarco<\/p>\n
His routine was upended, just like everyone else\u2019s, when the pandemic hit. He took the opportunity to start freeing himself from the vices he felt held too much power over him, giving up alcohol during lockdown and finally kicking his most famous dirty habit while in the midst of the cross-country road trip that produced his 2023 instrumental album Five Easy Hot Dogs. \u201cThatwas when I ended up quitting smoking,” he recalls. \u201cI drove across the country and lost my mind completely. It was f***ing horrible! Two weeks of just absolute pain.\u201d The lack of lyrics on Five Easy Hot Dogs made it a departure for DeMarco, but the album successfully highlighted his playful musicianship. Encouraged by the reception, DeMarco cleared his decks by releasing 199 songs and demos as the sprawling compilation One Wayne G in 2023.<\/p>\n
He started afresh last year, giving himself a couple of months back at home in Los Angeles to write and record a new album. His first attempt ended in a false start: an album tentatively titled Hear The Music thathe abandoned after contracting a serious case of \u201cdemo-itis\u201d \u2013<\/strong> that painful paranoia that no amount of tinkering will ever make the finished product measure up to the original idea. \u201cI got into the state where I was trying to re-record everything, moving drum microphones around and building weird huts in my garage to change the sound,\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt got to the point where I was like, this is ridiculous. So I shelved that, and then luckily I was able to make Guitar in a couple of weeks. They\u2019re all demo recordings, so demo-itis was impossible. It just felt right.\u201d<\/p>\nThe songs on Guitar,mostly sequenced in the same order he wrote them in, arrive purposelyunpolished. In an age when it\u2019s possible to carry a production desk inside your phone and the charts are filled with carefully calibrated, committee-approved pop music, it\u2019s hard not to hear the songs\u2019 fragile, imperfect beauty as a statement against bland conformity. The arrival of AI, points out DeMarco, only amplifies the creeping sense that everything is starting to sound the same. \u201cWe\u2019re in a funny zone right now where AI is coming in and getting good at things, fast,\u201d he says. \u201cThings start feeling paint-by-numbers sometimes. When you have AI bands coming around, and people listening to music without even realising it\u2019s AI-generated, we\u2019re in a weird place.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mac](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/MacDeMarcoLeadPhoto.jpg\")
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Mac DeMarco: \u2018I\u2019m deep enough in my career where I feel like I can make this kind of middle-aged, weird album\u2019 (Mac DeMarco)<\/p>\n
As disdainful as DeMarco was about the idea of young musicians not wanting to go out on tour, he\u2019s even more horrified by the idea that they may not even want to write their own songs. \u201cI hear about people using AI to even write lyrics a lot nowadays, which is a bit like\u2026 give me a f***ing break,\u201d he sighs. \u201cI think it\u2019s about intention. If people want to climb the mountain, I guess you use the tools you can to get up there. I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re gonna find when you get up there, but hopefully you\u2019re happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMarco prefers to ascend the mountain at his own pace. He feels similarly about touring. When he sets off later this month for his latest trek around the US, Europe, Canada and Japan, he and his band will be squeezed into a modest sprinter van they\u2019ll drive themselves. He has an aversion to tour buses and would rather play a handful of nights in a medium-sized venue than headline an arena. \u201cThe music industry always wants you to play the bigger rock box, but the bigger rock box, I found, sucks,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not about to get a video wall and s***. No disrespect to the video wall. Big bands that do a crazy light show, that\u2019s f***ing amazing. It\u2019s just not me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Needless to say, you\u2019ll never hear an AI-augmented melody or a robot-scripted lyric on a Mac DeMarco record. \u201cThere\u2019s a satisfaction I have with this kind of thing, because of how pure and real it feels to me,\u201d he says of Guitar. \u201cIt\u2019s supremely of me. The most important part of art is the human element, I think. Be it good or bad, that\u2019s what I want to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Guitar\u2019 is released on 22 August. DeMarco\u2019s tour begins in the US on 29 August and arrives in the UK on 8 November<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-351125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115042910690950476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}