THE LAST INDIE ROCK STAR

How Mac DeMarco got so popular.

- AMANDA PETRUSICH

Self-reliance defines DeMarco: on his new album, he played every instrument.

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's known as the "open vase" 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.