Mac DeMarco @ 9:30 Club - 5/23/2017
Freewheeling guitars, puns, and crowdsurfing teenagers? Sounds like a Mac DeMarco concert.
The Canadian singer-songwriter released his 3rd full-length album This Old Dog in 2017, and the album is just as introspective as ever, with added vintage synths providing some extra flair to Mac DeMarco's...Mac DeMarco-ness. While the album on a whole sounds more subdued than his previous offerings, it hasn't caused DeMarco and company to slow down their infamous antics too much. In fact, the first night of their sold-out two-night run at 9:30 Club proved that DeMarco and company won’t be calming down anytime soon. (Trigger warning: fidget spinners are involved.)
Mac DeMarco jumped off the railing at 9:30 Club not once, but twice. (Photo by Mauricio Castro / @themauricio)
Whether or not you want to call DeMarco’s music ‘slacker rock,’ ‘lo-fi’, or ‘jizz jazz (the artist’s preferred description), there's an undeniable laid-back quality to his songs, ones that could soundtrack your latest hangout...or smoke session. The guitar work from DeMarco and Andy White (who consistently had the most emotive face throughout the night) only added to it, with twangy guitar pedals creating that quintessential Mac DeMarco sound that the crowd wanted. But although his music evokes a sense of ‘chill,’ his on-stage antics are almost anything but. There is an implicit agreement between the band and the fans that the show will get weird. How else do you explain a laid-back tune like "Ode to Viceroy" getting people to do some very intense jumping? Or how do you explain all of the hats, jackets, bras, and fidget spinners that were thrown on stage? (By the way, DeMarco used the fidget spinner thrown on stage as a makeshift guitar pick for a few seconds, eliciting a huge roar of applause from the seemingly pro-fidget spinner lobby.)
But once all the beer bottle-waving, impressive guitar solos, and overall breezy songs were through, DeMarco engaged in one more decidedly not-laid-back act: jumping off the balcony railing of the 9:30 Club not once, but twice, crowdsurfing to the other side to do so. If there was one complaint some had, it's that the set may have been over-long at a hefty two hours, which may not have been what people were hoping for a Tuesday night. But then again, this is Mac DeMarco, so you should expect the unexpected when seeing him in concert...like jumping off the balcony. Twice.
Opening for Mac DeMarco was guitarist Andy White’s side project, Tonstartssbandht. Hailing from Orlando, FL, Andy and sibling Edwin White on drums have been performing as a duo since 2008. They performed a unique blend of psych-rock and jazz with some songs clocking in as long as 10 minutes that seem to meander at first glance but reveal some unique musical rhythms upon closer inspection. The back-and-forth action between the brothers was impressive as they slinked their way through structurally complex tracks and expressive 12-string guitars. Their latest release is the 2017 EP Sorcerer, released through Kemado Records.
