<\/p>\n
The musician Mac DeMarco recently bought a rambling, hundred-year-old farmhouse on an island off the coast of British Columbia, deep in the Salish Sea and accessible only via boat. A ferry runs a few times a day from Tsawwassen, near Vancouver; the trip takes about two hours. In late June, DeMarco picked me up from the ferry terminal in a vintage Land Cruiser, its halogen headlights covered by yellow smiley faces. The house came with some eighty olive trees, in varying states of vibrancy or decline. DeMarco had been pruning dead branches, attempting to conjure what\u2019s known as the \u201copen vase\u201d shape, gutting the brittle center growth to promote air circulation. During my three days on the island, he was messing around with the trees more or less constantly, hacking away with clippers or an electric saw, hurling tangles of foliage into a wheelbarrow and dumping its contents in the woods. Sometimes I would lodge my recorder between tree limbs so that we could talk while he worked. There, DeMarco was transforming from a rascally indie-rock icon into a gap-toothed, D.I.Y. frontiersman in disintegrating red Vans.<\/p>\n
In 2012, DeMarco released his d\u00e9but EP, \u201cRock and Roll Night Club,\u201d on Captured Tracks, a Brooklyn-based independent record label known for its deep bench of spacey, lo-fi guitar bands. By the time he put out his second full-length album, \u201cSalad Days,\u201d in 2014, he had been anointed a kind of debauched slacker king. DeMarco\u2019s records were easy, loose, and cool, with echoes of Neil Young and Brian Wilson, if they\u2019d been reared on dank memes, legal weed, and back issues of Thrasher<\/em>. Pitchfork<\/em> gave \u201cSalad Days\u201d its Best New Music designation. Prior to the album\u2019s release, the rapper Tyler, the Creator tweeted, \u201cDEAR MAC DEMARCO I LOVE YOU YOU ARE AWESOME<\/em>.\u201d DeMarco\u2019s followers were passionate and occasionally deranged. (That year, a female fan brought him a pig fetus suspended in a jar of formaldehyde; it was tattooed with a picture of DeMarco as a mermaid.) DeMarco described this period of sudden cultural ascendance\u2014\u201cwhen things started goin\u2019 wackadoodle\u201d\u2014as disorienting. \u201cThe cool kids would come from every city, and they were expecting some kind of sexy famous guy, but I was just a dumbass with a tuque on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n DeMarco has become only more popular in the past decade. \u201cChamber of Reflection,\u201d a teetering, synth-driven track from \u201cSalad Days,\u201d is ubiquitous on TikTok, and has been streamed nearly a billion times. DeMarco himself has more than twenty million monthly listeners on Spotify, a remarkable number for a dude who plays dazed, quivery guitar songs about whatever\u2019s on his mind. A TikTok account dedicated to his work has more than eight hundred thousand followers and features videos of DeMarco telling jokes that are sometimes scatological and always absurd. (Picture, say, a pleasingly unhinged-looking DeMarco, hoodie up, placing a fake phone call in which he attempts to order half a million dollars\u2019 worth of poop and pee.) DeMarco\u2019s fans have always been young, but he thinks that they might be getting younger. \u201cThere was a point where I kind of understood my audience. Now I have no fucking idea,\u201d he said. \u201cI grew up and they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n His new house sits in thrilling but somewhat perilous proximity to the ocean. From the deck, which runs parallel to the shoreline, you can spot orcas, humpback whales, bald eagles (a pair were nesting nearby, atop a gargantuan Douglas fir), otters, and harbor seals, whose speckled heads periodically popped out of the water, peering around for snacks. The property had been sold as is. The guest cottage, where I slept, had a handsome, airy bedroom jutting out over the beach, buttressed by an ad-hoc foundation that resembled something a juiced-up toddler might manufacture from glue and Popsicle sticks. At night, I could hear waves crashing loudly against the western wall. (\u201cIt\u2019s comin\u2019 down!\u201d DeMarco joked one morning. \u201cC\u2019est la vie!<\/em>\u00a0\u201d)<\/p>\n DeMarco and his longtime partner, Kiera McNally, had already fixed up a place in Echo Park, in Los Angeles; he was perhaps overly cognizant of the financial and psychic ferment that accompanies home renovations. Shortly after I arrived, I idly inquired if the property had a well\u2014once you have lived with a well, the health and viability of all wells somehow remain inescapably present in one\u2019s consciousness, a source of endless small talk, like weather, or sports\u2014and his face lit up. \u201cDo you know about wells?\u201d he asked. Freshwater had been on his mind. He\u2019d been monkeying around with an old concrete cistern and a pump, trying to figure out how to irrigate some raised beds. He\u2019d been researching local rules about rainwater collection. The whole situation was making him a little nervous. \u201cThis might have been a big mistake,\u201d DeMarco said. But he was eager to be humbled. \u201cI thought I knew everything when I was in my twenties. I want to stay in a place where I\u2019m constantly reminded that I don\u2019t know jack shit, I will never know jack shit, and then someday I\u2019m dead.\u201d<\/p>\n Later this month, DeMarco, who is thirty-five, will release \u201cGuitar,\u201d his tenth record and his first since 2023\u2019s \u201cOne Wayne G,\u201d a nine-hour compilation of mostly instrumental demos. DeMarco made \u201cGuitar\u201d at home in L.A. last November, in about two weeks. Just before that, he recorded an entirely different album, \u201cHear the Music,\u201d which he has played only for McNally. \u201cThat\u2019s the only time anyone will hear it, I think,\u201d he said. \u201cWith the second one, I played her a bit as I was recording it, but I didn\u2019t tell anyone I worked with for a good four months. I just didn\u2019t want to start the doomsday clock: \u2018Well, now, where are the photos?\u2019 It was a really nice experience to have it as a thing I could enjoy for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGuitar\u201d is an exceptionally self-contained record. DeMarco played every instrument; produced, engineered, and mixed the songs; shot the album cover and music videos using a tripod; and is releasing it on his own label. He is sometimes modest about his chops\u2014\u201cI can specifically do the little thing that I\u2019ve done that has put me where I am now, but I can pretty much just do the little thing,\u201d he said\u2014but \u201cGuitar\u201d is stunning and deeply idiosyncratic, unlike anything else in his discography. It contains some of his most intimate and sophisticated songwriting. \u201cThat\u2019s the advancement,\u201d DeMarco said. (He was more reserved about his musical performance: \u201cThe guitar playing sounds like I went back ten years, maybe.\u201d) It\u2019s possible to locate points of comparison\u2014I hear the closeness of Nick Drake\u2019s \u201cFive Leaves Left,\u201d the psychedelic wobble of David Crosby circa \u201cIf I Could Only Remember My Name\u201d\u2014but it is hard to tether DeMarco to any particular tradition. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel unsure about it at all,\u201d he said of the album.<\/p>\n DeMarco spoke about the work of songwriting as compulsory, as if he were fulfilling a prophecy. \u201cI think if I don\u2019t do it, I will be punished by the universe,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I\u2019m making the songs, I feel satisfaction, and maybe that\u2019s also some kind of addiction\u2014\u2018You did it again, pal!\u2019\u2014but I think it\u2019s just that I\u2019m doing what I\u2019m supposed to be doing.\u201d He went on, \u201cI can have other hobbies. I can poorly renovate houses or fuck up motorcycle engines. But when I do those things I feel guilty.\u201d That notion\u2014an ineluctable vocational calling\u2014is central to \u201cPunishment,\u201d a new song featuring a swaying guitar line:<\/p>\n Backwards, but without plans to regress On the night of my arrival, DeMarco became briefly preoccupied by a wobbly deck chair. After dinner, he retrieved a saw from the shed, cut a new support beam, and held court for a bit on the utility and character of the Robertson screw, which features a tapered square at its center and was patented by a Canadian tool salesman in 1909. DeMarco eventually got the chair stabilized, though the next day he brought it up as an example of his innate antsiness. \u201cSometimes all this just feels like a distraction from something,\u201d he said. \u201cI just get a little\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. homed in.\u201d<\/p>\n DeMarco was born in 1990 in British Columbia, and was brought up in Edmonton, Alberta. His birth name, Vernor Winfield MacBriare Smith IV, has an aristocratic jangle, though his mother, Agnes DeMarco, changed it to MacBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco after his father left, when Mac was five, and failed to pay child support. \u201cOn my dad\u2019s side of the family, there was money, but I just didn\u2019t really know those people,\u201d he said. He believes that being reared by a single mom might have given him a certain scrappiness. He referred to his fellow-Albertans as \u201cutility people.\u201d \u201cIn Canada, especially out here, even the tradespeople are, like, \u2018I could<\/em> do it for ya, but framin\u2019 somethin\u2019s not that hard,\u2019\u00a0\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like \u2018What, you can\u2019t do it yourself?\u2019 I appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n DeMarco doesn\u2019t smoke or drink anymore. It\u2019s hard to overstate his prior dedication to these vices. There was a period of time in which it was not unusual for him to empty an entire bottle of Jameson during a set. In 2012, he wrote a woozy, lovesick ballad, \u201cOde to Viceroy,\u201d about his preferred brand of smokes. (\u201cAnd oh, don\u2019t let me see you cryin\u2019\u00a0\/\u00a0\u2019Cause oh, honey, I\u2019ll smoke you \u2019til I\u2019m dyin\u2019,\u201d he sang, his voice notably scratchy.) The photographer Danny Cohen once shot a portrait of DeMarco submerged in a bathtub brimming with cigarettes; he was also photographed under what appeared to be a gentle rain of loosies. (\u201cSo you made cigs popular with kids?\u201d the podcaster Adam Friedland once asked him.) Back then, DeMarco\u2019s unabashed libertinism was sort of charming\u2014he is almost preternaturally charismatic\u2014though on occasion it felt depraved. (If your tolerance for tomfoolery, body horror, and the gnarliest corners of the internet is high, you can find a video online of a nude DeMarco onstage, drunk, consummating his relationship with a drumstick.) \u201cI definitely had a pretty severe drinking problem,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was bad. I\u2019m glad I\u2019m away from it. Would I be here doing the peaceful thing if I hadn\u2019t gotten sober? Probably not. Would I even be alive? I don\u2019t know. I see photos of myself in 2018 or 2019 and I look near-dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newyorker.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The musician Mac DeMarco recently bought a rambling, hundred-year-old farmhouse on an island off the coast of British Columbia, deep in the Salish Sea and accessible only via boat. A ferry runs a few times a day from Tsawwassen, near Vancouver; the trip takes about two hours. In late June, DeMarco picked me up from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1957655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[21941,22008,320998,343870,343871],"class_list":["post-1957654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-audio","tag-magazine","tag-onecolumnnarrow","tag-profiles","tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Is-Mac-DeMarco-the-Last-Indie-Rock-Star.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1957654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1957654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1957655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1957654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1957654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1957654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
You can have all of me, a pound of my flesh
\u2019Cause Mama, I was told that punishment will come to
Those of us who don\u2019t do what we\u2019re made to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n