by Ziggy Merritt

To say anything of last night I would start with a short, impressionist list of all the sights and sounds witnessed within the rough hour humble troubadour, Mac DeMarco, occupied the stage: Moshing, mischievous smirks, young lads shotgunning beer, people in strange, plastic baby-faced masks playing maracas and other kitschy instruments. These are just a few of the things I was lucky enough to witness from my safe vantage point on the far left side of the Trocadero this past Tuesday.

My only expectation going in was that I would hear most, if not all, of the tracks from Mac’s latest mini-album, Another One. That expectation was duly met of course with the sole exception of “My House by the Water” for obvious reasons (it’s an ambient mixture of gurgling water and discordant keystrokes followed by an invitation to DeMarco’s home…in case that wasn’t obvious). Naturally all of this was supplemented by additions from his brief yet already robust catalog of tunes. “Salad Days” and “Ode to Viceroy” were early crowd-pleasers, though the culminating clusterfuck of a heavily improvised “Enter Sandman” cover during the encore easily won over the night.

Of course there were douchebags within the crowd that threatened to spoil the evening. The “I’m Going To Scream Song Suggestions” Bros was one of them while the people crunching empty water bottles behind me rounded out that list. But as the set continued I gradually lost awareness of these annoyances. Maybe it’s Mac’s devilish charm or the fact that he did a daring stage dive from the balcony level of the theatre with the assistance of a fanatic crowd; it’s hard to tell. The spray of water, beer, snapbacks, and bodies -live ones if it needs to be said- across the venue left anything up to chance. By the time I left the Trocadero that night I realized I might have been fortunate enough to see one of the best live shows of my still brief career.