![\"mv\"](\"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/mv.jpg\" "\\"mv\\"")
<\/a>After his band\u2019s show at the Lo Pub, Mac DeMarco, the pop-sensible singer and guitarist of the duo Makeout Videotape, is listing off what he writes songs about. Once he got tired of writing about girls, he started writing about less meaningful stuff\u2014like eating things, and his job of teaching old Vietnamese women how to use computers. Or at least that\u2019s what he said. He turns to his drummer, Alex Calder. \u201cI write a lot of songs about Alex too. He\u2019s having a rough time in his life right now.\u201d\nCalder shakes his head, smiling, like he knows that he wouldn\u2019t be able to stop DeMarco even if he tried. \u201cNo, I\u2019m not really, but go on.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMarco continues on, kind of innocently, \u201cI dunno, he moved to Vancouver to go\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJesus Christ,\u201d Calder utters and puts his head in his hands.<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019m pretty lost trying to figure out if DeMarco is being sincere. During the show, he was being the biggest goof. Halfway through their first song, he realized that his amp\u2019s reverb wasn\u2019t working and he whispered \u201cJust one second, folks,\u201d in a raspy voice, and kicked it. Since that didn\u2019t fix it, he got down on his knees and fiddled with some cords, running his tongue over his front teeth exaggeratedly until reverb washed over his surf-tinged riffs.<\/p>\n
At the end of his cover to Harry Nilsson\u2019s \u201cI Guess the Lord Must Be in New York,\u201d he told Calder to keep drumming on the tom and snare (which is all Makeout Videotape\u2019s drum kit is), and then he stopped playing his guitar, got down on his knees and basically started yodelling. During their last song, DeMarco instructed me (the closest person to the stage) to pour his beer down his throat while they were still playing. So yeah, it\u2019s hard to take him seriously about anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe you\u2019ve heard of the community on Davie Street out there?\u201d says DeMarco flatly. Calder and their merch guy are constraining laughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell it\u2019s a predominately homosexual neighbourhood. We\u2019re from Edmonton, and a lot of bad things happen there [for gay people]. A lot of gay bashing. It\u2019s not a very good scene for them, so Alex initially wanted to move out there to be in a more comfortable environment for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the two guys moved out to Vancouver, where they made a couple recordings inspired by Jonathan Richman, Arthur Russell, the Beatles and Harry Nilsson. (Recordings that sound like crap only because they don\u2019t know how to record, insists DeMarco.) And in their new locale, they started creating a little bit of a following. Then the guys of Unfamiliar Records set them up with a number of tour dates with Japandroids last fall, after which, Calder moved back to his parents\u2019 place in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a harsh scene for him once again,\u201d continues DeMarco. \u201cBut after doing that, we picked him up for this tour and he finally mustered up the courage to tell them that, uh, that he\u2019s doing his own thing.\u201d
\nDuring the show, DeMarco had announced that Calder came out to his parents on the drive to Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u2014I just don\u2019t want to talk about it,\u201d says Calder absently. \u201cIt\u2019s kinda sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeMarco erupts into a half laugh, half smoker\u2019s cough and leans over to me again.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake sure you print all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can witness Makeout Videotape\u2019s antics when they open up for You Say Party! We Say Die! on April 7 at the Royal Albert.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Taylor Benjamin Burgess After his band\u2019s show at the Lo Pub, Mac DeMarco, the pop-sensible singer and guitarist of the duo Makeout Videotape, is listing off what he writes songs about. Once he got tired of writing about girls, he started writing about less meaningful stuff\u2014like eating things, and his job of teaching old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[454,586],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-indie-rock","tag-makeout-videotape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}