Photos by Sacha Lecca
Interview by Simon Vozick-Levinson
1. Canadian singer-guitarist Mac DeMarco recently invited Rolling Stone to hang out at the Brooklyn apartment where he recorded this year’s excellently laid-back Salad Days. He made the album entirely on his own in a tiny bedroom (pictured) – often with his girlfriend sleeping in a loft bed above his head. “I record pretty quietly,” DeMarco, 24, explains with an easy grin. “Usually, it’s either me doing a guitar track over and over or, like, singing very softly. She probably thought I was a fucking weirdo.”
Read on for more candid snapshots from DeMarco’s place.
2.DeMarco moved to New York last year after stints in Montreal, Vancouver, and his native Edmonton. Recording the follow-up to 2012’s super-buzzed 2, his full-length debut under his own name, came with heavy expectations. “There’s that whole stigma where people are like, ‘You’re going to fuck up on the sophomore album!'” he says. “It drove me completely insane. You just kind of have to forget about it, or you’re just going to end up making this hunk of crap.”
3. DeMarco hangs with his friend and roommate Andy Boay, who’s joining his backing band.”Everybody who lives here is in bands,” DeMarco says of the multi-room space. “I think the other guys have lived here for, like, six years or something.”
4. DeMarco moved to New York last year after stints in Montreal, Vancouver, and his native Edmonton. Recording the follow-up to 2012’s super-buzzed 2, his full-length debut under his own name, came with heavy expectations. “There’s that whole stigma where people are like, ‘You’re going to fuck up on the sophomore album!'” he says. “It drove me completely insane. You just kind of have to forget about it, or you’re just going to end up making this hunk of crap.”
5. DeMarco got into music as a kid in Edmonton, where he briefly entertained dreams of technical guitar wizardry. “My teacher was like, ‘We’re going to turn you into a Joe Satriani, Steve Vai guy,’ and I was like, ‘Uh, OK,'” he recalls. By his teens, he had given up on that and started jamming with his buddies in a series of goofy joke bands. “We were like, ‘It doesn’t matter if we’re good or bad, let’s just get as drunk as possible and go play.'”
6. By the time he turned 20, DeMarco was gigging around Canada and the U.S. to support his early releases under the stage name Makeout Videotape. In 2012, he toured tirelessly to promote his EP Rock and Roll Nightclub and, later, 2. “After we got some good reviews, the shows all of a sudden got way bigger,” he says. “I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?'”
7. By the time he turned 20, DeMarco was gigging around Canada and the U.S. to support his early releases under the stage name Makeout Videotape. In 2012, he toured tirelessly to promote his EP Rock and Roll Nightclub and, later, 2. “After we got some good reviews, the shows all of a sudden got way bigger,” he says. “I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?'”
8. “Lately we’ve been getting a lot of bras thrown on stage,” DeMarco says. “Kids just love to crowd surf all of the time. They’ll come up on stage and step all over our shit. It’s crazy, because my music is not punk music or anything. It’s not, like, hardcore. It’s not conducive to mosh pits. But they go insane!”
9. “To me, it’s flattering,” he adds of fans going wild at his shows. “As long as people are having fun. And if ‘having fun’ means starting a circle pit on a really slow, acoustic song, I’m like, ‘Hey, I don’t understand, but that’s cool.'”
10. Salad Days’ easygoing sound has earned many a classic rock comparison – and DeMarco couldn’t be happier. “One thing I hear a lot is, ‘Dude, my mom loves your record,’ or ‘I got it for my dad for Christmas,'” he says. “I’m essentially doing dad rock. Which is great, because I love Steely Dan, you know? Nothing wrong with dad rock!”
UNRULY HEARTS 