Once known for his kneejerk nudity, including putting two drumsticks up his bottom during a rendition of U2’s Beautiful Day, Mac DeMarco is mellowing out his live shows a little – in line with his music, which is getting more melancholy by the year.
The Canadian specialises in a unique brand of chewed-tape guitar-pop, showcased over three excellent albums and a new EP, Another One, which gets aired in its entirety here. Most of his songs are beautiful cornpone ballads that skateboard over to their girlfriend’s house with flowers nicked from someone else’s garden: ramshackle but adorable. On openers The Stars Are Calling My Name and The Way You’d Love Her, the crowd surges around but with a dopey inertia, rather than an antic moshpit energy.
The drummer’s kit is set up around his knees, like a jazz player’s, maintaining the sense of a supper club band gone to seed. Its other members keep the doofus levels high: bassist Pierce McGarry maintains a stream of bozo patter, while the keyboard player has little to do other than be serenely crowdsurfed. Guitarist Andy White is the spit of Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, and you can imagine he too has left a trail of high-school girls in his wake. He has the air of a man who is constantly sated, and moves around the stage in goofy exaggerated steps, like someone walking across some freshly waxed lino. At one point, he and McGarry exchange some Riverdance moves, and swap guitars by chucking them to each other through the air.
So far, so chill, but there’s trouble afoot: Another One’s songs are riven with emotional devastation and self-doubt, jarring with the stoner good times. On A Heart Like Hers, DeMarco, clutching only the mic, emits a sudden distressed “fuuuck” as the lighters sway – but then mugs off again as the song ends, sticking his tongue out. Then it’s into Still Together, with its euphoric The Lion Sleeps Tonight-style melody, and maybe romance is back on after all. He radically overestimates the upper-body strength of London’s indie-hipsters though, and spends much of his own bout of crowdsurfing struggling to rise above ankle height.
Heartbreak thus averted – or papered over, at least – it’s time for a barechested encore of Metallica’s Enter Sandman, segueing into a chunky version of Smoke on the Water. This clown is keeping his tears well hidden.
