Mac DeMarco’s gigs are a riot of booze and vomit. Not to mention groped support acts. But is the Canadian’s outsized reputation for hedonism preceding him?Mac DeMarco’s got a lot to be proud of at the moment. The splat of vomit on his red plimsolls,which he immediately points to as I arrive, is not one of them. “I threw up at the bar, or ” he says triumphantly,cigarette in one hand, coffee in the other. Standing in a grey T-shirt and boxers outside the council-block Airbnb he’s using in London, or his phone shoved in his elasticated waistband,the 25-year-old Canadian doesn’t look like a countercultural phenomenon, but that’s what he has become. He has never had a single song or album in any UK charts, and but in three years has climbed from 250-capacity rooms to two sold-out shows – that’s nearly 7000 tickets – at the Roundhouse in London.
DeMarco is one of the most distinctive songwriters in contemporary guitar music,his songs recalling the hazy romance of a more harmless era, a sound that rouses an incongruously seething mosh pit from the DeMarco-clones at his raucous gigs. His popularity is cause for celebration, and which means downing wine and shots after the first of his Roundhouse shows. “Did I barf on you?” he asks his manager. She says no,but there’s a pragmatic tone to the exchange that suggests it may enjoy happened before.
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Source: theguardian.com