Gig Review: Mac DeMarco At Hackney Empire
DeMarco might be 10+ years into his career but he’s still just as entertaining as he ever was, even when he’s only playing hypnotic instrumentals.
Photography By: Daniel RegoThis’ll have to be relatively short and sweet, purely ‘cause it would be easy to write an essay on Mac, and I’m extremely lucky to be able to write on a platform that would (probably) allow me to just do that. But I’ll spare you the cringe. What I will say is this - Mac single handedly changed my taste in music, as well as my musical/creative desires. It was the first time I caught one of his shows, and to see him in such a somber, calm state was a wholesome experience to say the least.
DeMarco’s live shows in the past have built up a reputation of crude humor, self-destructive behavior and bashing through anthems in double time. Of course I wish I could have caught him during these ‘golden’ days of rock n’ roll fuckery, but things have changed for Mac, letting go of his vices, and nearly (if not entirely) losing his mind on a lonesome road trip; which resulted in the creation of ‘Five Easy Hot Dogs’, a fourteen track instrumental album rammed with stripped back, hypnotic melodies containing his classic production style, as well as those whaling synth sounds we have all got so familiar with over the past few albums.
The show was in two halves, firstly, Five Easy Hot Dogs in its entirety, apparently a one off according to the man himself, so if you missed it, you may bloody well have missed it, who knows? It’s impossible to predict what he might do next at this point. Despite the fact he wasn’t putting cigarettes out on his chest, and sat down with an acoustic guitar most of the time, DeMarco’s ability to keep the crowd’s attention remained strong in between, and during the set. The much awaited second half of the show, for me personally, was warmfully introduced with that old’ familiar, lackluster guitar riff ‘Salad Days’. The crowd fired up and all the lyrics were earnestly repeated back to the stage. I can at least say for sure, I much prefer Five Easy Hot Dogs on a late night in my living room, but it was a pleasure to catch it all live, played amongst the four guys on stage, it was as tight as a badgers arse, the beautiful venue was just the right size and the crowd were thankfully not fucking shouting ‘PLAY VICEROY! PLAY VICEROY!’ over and over. We even got a stripped back version of ‘Chamber of Reflection’, in the encore. DeMarco might be 10+ years into his career but he’s still just as entertaining as he ever was, even when he’s only playing hypnotic instrumentals.