Mac DeMarco at Pohoda 2019
Millennials’ favourite guy, Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV – known as Mac DeMarco – will make Pohoda 2019 sway to his summer BBQ soundtrack and casual surf-rock. This 28-year-old Canadian singer and multi-instrumentalist managed to release three albums and two LPs during half a decade, with Pitchfork labelling the first two albums "Best New Music" in their praising reviews. However, don’t let yourself be fooled with the lazy-dreamy records when it comes to your concert expectations. Mark Beaumont of The Guardian wrote the following about his concert at London's Brixton Academy: "After lulling the crowd with seamless sunny tunes, the Canadian pop eccentric breaks into a final act of stupendous abandon, magic tricks and yodelling."
06. January 2019
From Edmonton to Vancouver, from there to Montreal, New York to finally land in Los Angeles. Mac DeMarco was drawing new inspiration in all of these cities, yet he remained faithful to his unmistakable style, which is a trend for others. His songs are dominated by a guitar with a distinctive chorus and vibrato complemented by 80s synths, flat drums, lo-fi bass, and DeMarco's unmistakable voice. Mac started in Vancouver punk-rock bands like Japandroids or Makeout Videotape. After moving to Montreal, he tried a solo career, but it didn’t go as well as he’d hoped, and so he was earning extra money in medical experiments or as a road workman.
The mini-LP called Rock and Roll Night Club changed everything and Captured Tracks agreed to record an album. Pitchfork put the debut entitled 2 into Best New Music category. The following Salad Days got the same “label” and Pitchfork highlighted particularly DeMarco’s civil narrative talent with accessible poetic dreaminess. The album was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. At that time DeMarco was no longer the hot stuff just in the United States and Canada. NME gave it nine out of ten, and magazine Q reviewed it with the words "the pleasure is ours". The Observer praised his DIY approach and carefree mood, and Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote: "Salad Days isn't the stuff of mainstream success, but it strongly suggests his cult is only going to get bigger.” His following albums meet these words, too…
In 2015 he released a mini-LP Another One, which is, as he puts it, a collection of love songs. Still in Rock ranked the LP the third in their best albums of the year list. According to the MOJO, this personal recording is pure pleasure on the surface, but underneath, it’s not quite so easy. In May 2017, he released The Old Dog, which, according to Clash Magazine, has been the most essential chapter in his career so far, and described it as intimate and sincerely honest. Exclaim, Les Inrockuptibles and Noisey listed it in the selection of the best albums of the year. During last year's The Record Store Day, he released demo versions of songs from This Old Dog under the name Old Dog Demos. In addition, there are several tracks that didn’t make it to the last studio album. We can definitely imagine his songs in these pleasant, stripped-down arrangements performed as a part of our Pohoda acoustic session ;). He played a sold out show at Ateliér Babylon at the end of October, which is characterized perfectly by Hudba.sk review titled: “Mac DeMarco and his buddies taught Bratislava a lesson of concert humour and freedom.” You can come and experience it yourself at the Trenčín airport in half a year.