Artists

Mac DeMarco Biography

Biography

Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, Vernor Winfield MacBriare Smith IV became Mac DeMarco in 1990. Under the stage name Makeout Videotape, he first appeared out of nowhere. DeMarco went from his birthplace to Vancouver in the summer of 2008, right after graduating from high school, and self-released Heat Wave, a collection of songs he penned and recorded while bored and listless in his new surroundings.

The CDs quickly ran out of stock, and Makeout Videotape began performing live with the addition of players Alex Calder and Jen Clement. After joining with Unfamiliar Records and embarking on a tour with labelmates Japandroids in the fall of 2009, the group swiftly attained regional acclaim.

Career & Projects

The 2014 album Salad Days propelled DeMarco’s peculiar fusion of slacker pop, jazz, ’70s soft rock, and glam into the vanguard realm, selling tens of thousands of copies and altering the course of what was happening in indie rock at the time. Early releases on Captured Tracks and endless touring increased DeMarco’s fan base.

Later relocations to New York and Los Angeles resulted in successful albums on each of which the multi-instrumentalist DeMarco established a reputation for playing and recording every note. Themes of growing older were again explored in his 2017 album This Old Dog, this time with better production; this pattern continued in his 2019 album Here Comes the Cowboy, which was issued on his own imprint.

He abruptly changed his direction in 2011, moving to Montreal and quitting the band to pursue a solo career. He signed with the Brooklyn independent label Captured Tracks in the beginning of 2012, and soon after, he self-released his debut mini-album, Rock and Roll Night Club. DeMarco returned to his Queens waterfront house after a protracted tour in support of his debut album to record the mini-LP Another One, which was released in August 2015.

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