Mac DeMarco Revue – booming melodies and shirtless antics at Carnegie Hall | Mac DeMarco

MMore than 68 years after Leonard Bernstein’s first-ever youth concert, Carnegie Hall was once again filled with youthful energy on Sunday evening. The occasion was the first of two sold-out performances by indie-pop scion Mac DeMarco, whose multi-genre, parasocially adoring fan base has been one of the few indies of the 2010s to continue an increasingly aging trajectory. There were many parent chaperones next to their beaming teenagers, while a group of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed post-teens sitting behind me – having traveled from Wisconsin for the occasion – Googled: “Where to find Mac DeMarco after the concert” and wondered if they would kiss evil 1975 frontman Matty Healy if they had the chance.

“I can’t believe how fancy this place is for Mac,” one marveled – and it has indeed been a strange trajectory for DeMarco, who emerged from the shores of Vancouver in the early 2010s looking like a modern, party-proof pigsty and with a sonic suitcase filled with pretty guitar warbles, stained with nicotine and carrying a faint smell of cheap beer. His early live sets were also prone to Limp Bizkit covers and spontaneous make-out sessions from the audience; the 2014 Pepperoni Playboy docu-short was chock-full of scenes of new-money indie backpacking opulence, as DeMarco and his ragtag band drank champagne from lobster shells and cliff-dived amid a non-stop touring schedule.

But as with many aspects of popular culture, Covid represented a turning point for DeMarco’s career. Enjoying his first real sense of downtime in nine years, he sobered up (yes, cigarettes included) and stepped away from the public spotlight for several years, allowing his catalog to resonate virally and otherwise before returning to good singing with last year’s fine-feathered guitar. DeMarco’s output in the 2020s has often taken a prolific and largely subdued turn; his 2023 compilation One Wayne G lasted almost nine hours, while this year saw the official release of four largely instrumental albums that radiated a mature, monastic beauty.

DeMarco has, arguably and somewhat improbably, grown up — and in the moments before he and his band took to Carnegie’s bracing, iconic stage, it was certainly fair to wonder whether he would clean up more for such a serious venue. Fear not: DeMarco and co’s two-and-a-half-hour set was a spring-loaded release for the indie court jester. There were thrills, spills and shirtless reveries in the form of a surprisingly radiant cover of Michael Jackson’s Human Nature (for which fellow provocateur of the moment Nathan Fielder, not kidding, joined him on stage in Los Angeles just a few weeks ago). Mac may have calmed down when it comes to his personal life, but he’s more than happy – even knowingly – to continue playing the fool, and the audience eats him up in kind.

Ironically, this current tour, an exhaustive, career-spanning showcase that even prompted its star to mockingly apologize two-thirds of the way through, makes a very serious case for DeMarco as one of the most impressive and deeply felt pop songwriters of the 21st century. Aside from the ruminative melancholy that runs through even his most energetic pieces, the luminous guitar and key fantasies contained in his catalog remain unmatched despite the legion of imitators, and Carnegie Hall proved the ideal venue to bring out his textural genius. The big balls of melody that open Passing Out Pieces, from 2014’s groundbreaking Salad Days, were practically frightening in their pronounced nature; a slowed-down version of the smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em homage Ode to Viceroy (its tempo set to match the set’s softer middle section) was richer than a slice of tres leches with ice cream on top.

With a collection of tunes like DeMarco’s, extended goofs and acrobatic stage antics become unnecessary; nevertheless, during a beefed-up version of One Wayne G’s simple and straightforward love song, I Like Her, the man of the moment reassembled a mic stand to function as a track and field obstacle, unsuccessfully clearing it and crashing to the ground. Several songs later, he stalked the back of Carnegie’s cavernous stage like an apex predator before returning to his nemesis at the mic stand and, to much applause, clearing the jump with ease.

His onstage jokes were often delivered in a voice resembling Vincent Price, the late master of Hollywood spooks, and at one point he gave the microphone to an audience member to ask how comfortable the seats were. (Cozier than Radio City Music Hall, in case you were wondering.) Several songs — including the title track from his 2017 twilight masterpiece This Old Dog — were dedicated to his own canine friend, the improbable Buck Naked DeMarco; later in the series, DeMarco raved about visions of “a trough full of ground cheese meat” and, strikingly, engaged in an almost Oedipal musing reflecting the fate his millennial cohort perpetually faces: “I wish to be a little crying baby, to go back into the mother… to be born again.”

The question remains whether DeMarco’s unabashed silliness on stage prevented him from being taken seriously by more discerning music listeners. But, for now, his fans continue to make their voices heard when it comes to what they want from him, in a very literal sense. “Do a flip!” a male audience member in the orchestra seats shouted during a quiet moment; “Do you think I am able do a flip? » DeMarco asked seriously, before performing a perfect cartwheel to a delighted reception. “I want to be your pig,” he growled happily after catching his breath. Fair enough.