Mac DeMarco review – glowing melodies and shirtless antics at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall, New York After winning over gen Z, the cult indie rocker makes the historic venue swoon with introspective anthems and a Michael Jackson cover More than 68 years after Leonard Bernstein ’s first-ever Young People’s Concert, Carnegie Hall was yet again overrun with

Carnegie Hall, New York After winning over gen Z, the cult indie rocker makes the historic venue swoon with introspective anthems and a Michael Jackson cover More than 68 years after Leonard Bernstein ’s first-ever Young People’s Concert, Carnegie Hall was yet again overrun with youthful energy on Sunday night. The occasion was the first of two sold-out performances from gap-toothed indie-pop scion Mac DeMarco , whose adoringly parasocial cross-genre fanbase has been one of the few in 2010s indie to continue an increasingly aged-down trajectory. There was many a parental chaperone next to their beaming teens, while a group of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed post-adolescents sitting behind me – having travelled all the way from Wisconsin for the occasion – audibly Googled: “Where to find Mac DeMarco after the concert” and quizzed each other on whether they’d lay a smooch on The 1975 ’s devilish frontman Matty Healy if given a chance.

“I can’t believe how fancy this place is for Mac,” one of them marveled – and it has indeed been a strange trajectory for DeMarco, who emerged from the shores of Vancouver in the early 2010s resembling a party-hardy modern-day Pigpen and with an aural suitcase stuffed with lovely guitar-warbles, stained with nicotine and carrying the faint stink of cheap brew. His early live sets were equally prone to Limp Bizkit covers and spontaneous audience makeout sessions; the 2014 docu-short Pepperoni Playboy was replete with scenes of new-indie-money dirtbag opulence, as DeMarco and his ragtag group drank champagne out of lobster shells and went cliff-diving amid a nonstop tour schedule. Continue reading...