Mac DeMarco

Oct. 30, 9 p.m. and Oct. 31, 4 p.m. | Commodore Ballroom

Tickets: Sold out

Mac DeMarco has come a long way since playing concerts where he shoved his hand up his butt and caused general mayhem on stage while performing his goofy brand of slacker cabaret rock.

These days, the Mac you encounter via phone is much more laid back and affable, similar to the one you encounter on his last two records, the critically acclaimed and Polaris Music Prize shortlisted Salad Days, which ended up on several “best of 2014” lists (including Rolling Stone’s), and its followup Another One.

The 25-year-old isn’t shy about discussing his quitting drinking before performing live, something that has had a profound positive impact on his life.

“My genitalia has been exposed before, I’ve sodomized myself — all kinds of different ‘treats,’” DeMarco named as some of his wildest past stage antics during a recent phone interview. “There’s been peeing in pants and otherwise. Not so much any more. That’s back when I was trying to get a shock out of people.

“I’ve been playing shows since I was 16 and I’ve always been drunk before I played. I think I got so used to doing that, that going into it completely sober — it’s not like, ‘Oh, I gotta take this seriously now’ — I get more nervous and more jittery and more crazy if I don’t drink, so it’s its own ‘getting messed up’ in its own way, you know? I feel empowered by it.”

That’s not to say DeMarco isn’t the same kind of “love or hate” guy you may have seen perform before. His stage persona — comprising his gap-toothed grin, beat-up guitars, baseball cap, baggy overalls and Simpsons paraphernalia — is still cartoonish, his music a cross between “hipster Jimmy Buffett” and the bong-worthy rock of Ween, but his personal life has had much of an impact on his recorded output.

On Salad Days and Another One, what one could call his “blue duology,” DeMarco showed himself in introspective soul mode, penning little romantic nuggets informed by his life with his girlfriend in New York City.

“When I’m recording, it’s a lot different than being on the road — rock ’n’ roll and alcoholic guy,” he said. “When I’m home it’s meditation time and alone time. Maybe I get a little blue when I’m home. I enjoy writing the songs. That’s the stuff I feel comfortable writing about.”

Born Vernor Winfield McBriare Smith IV in Duncan, B.C., DeMarco moved to Edmonton when he was just a few months old.

Named after his great grandfather, who was once Alberta’s Minister of Railways and Telephones, DeMarco saw his mother change his name to McBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco (shortened to Mac DeMarco) when he was a kid.

“I don’t know that much about that side of the family,” DeMarco said of his father’s lineage. “My grandpa was the second, my dad was the third, and I was the fourth. But my dad wasn’t really a stand up dude.