Mac Demarco at the Magic Stick

My friend Fiona has historically been the facilitator of most of my impromptu-concert-going. Once during my freshman year I was studying in the East Quad basement when Fiona called me offering a ticket to see Girl Talk at the Blind Pig if I could make it to a street corner across town “on Packard next to the brick house” within ten minutes. More excited by the adventure than I was mildly psyched to see Girl Talk, I ditched my backpack with a friend and jogged to Packard and hill to join her concert-going caravan. But I got out of class this past Thursday, charged my phone and found a text from Fiona inviting me to see Mac Demarco at the Magic Stick, I was excited both to have some much-needed spontaneous fun and to see one of my favorite new musicians. I’ve been a fan of Mac since about the time that everyone became a fan of Mac, when he found commercial success with the release of his laid-back but straightforward album ‘2,’ a series of carefree odes to cigarettes, apologies to his mother, and tender love songs. A word-cloud of reviews and write-ups on Demarco would probably come up with bolded key-words like ‘stoner’ (though he doesn’t touch the stuff), 90s-alt, and ‘hat (he fields a lot of questions about his omnipresent baseball cap),’ but I like better comparisons to solo John Lennon and My Bloody Valentine. Demarco himself does nothing to combat more casual descriptions of his music, calling his style ‘jizz-jazz,’ but his refusal to take publicly take his own music seriously seems to just reflect a kind of ambivalence towards his sudden success. Demarco’s newest album ‘Salad Days,’ released April 2^th, is now being heralded as a finessed elaboration on ‘2,’ with the same laid-back rock’n’roll feel applied to more serious, reflective lyrical subject matter.

The Magic Stick sold out at a capacity of 275, and the venue was already filling up by the time we arrived. “ It’s when I come to shows like this that I remember – there actually aren’t that many hipsters in Ann Arbor,” Fiona laughed as she surveyed the crowd, where pastel colored hair, dreads, PBR, beards and plaid abounded in a pretty comprehensive exhibit of the new crusty edge of hipsterdom.

As soon as Mac and three person backing band wandered out onstage to do their own sound check, I immediately realized that I wasn’t going to be able to see anything and jumped at the chance to sit on the edge of a table above the crowd. The seat turned out to be a godsend for a short kid, especially when as the first song started the crowd unexpectedly began moshing in an odd but endearing show of enthusiasm for the laid-back rock’n’roller. The performance itself was full of infectious, genuine enthusiasm. Tour reviews often cite the musician’s odd proclivity to strip completely naked and/or get obscene with drumsticks, but the set was mostly gimmick-free, besides the dutiful singing of a happy-birthday song to a brave 16 year old mosher. My vantage point gave me a great view of Mac’s onstage dynamic – laid back but engaged, grinning through his gap-tooth and joking with his band members. Although Demarco actually records every instrumental part on his albums himself, he tours with three of his old friends on guitar, bass and drums, forming a crew of musician-friends that clearly enjoy playing together.  When Demarco occasionally put his guitar aside to play keyboard and sing with the mic in his hand, he closed his eyes as though earnestly soliloquizing – but beyond the occasional tender moment, Mac gave a generally buoyant and upbeat performance. By the time he gleefully took off his omnipresent baseball cap and crowd-surfed back and forth, the crowd greeted him like an old buddy.

We waited to meet him afterwards in a queue that was less like a line and more like an anxious vortex of iphones swirling around the tired musician. He seemed exhausted, dutifully throwing up peace signs for instagram pics, signing girls’ jean jackets in lipstick, and gracefully accepting a demo tape someone slipped into his jacket pocket, but sometimes staring off into space between groups of people. I almost felt bad for him by the time Fiona and I made it to the front of the needy vortex, and we both made it a point to look him in the eye and thank him for the great show. “Sure,” he said, “thank you.” As we shuffled off, he quietly accepted a fan’s offer to trade hats, and a skinny kid walked away grinning wildly, wearing what looked like a very well-loved, very dirty white baseball cap.