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.
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