mac demarco

Review of Mac DeMarco at Echoplex in LA on April 5, 2013
By: Scott Kroha

I made the familiar walk from Angelino Heights, through the neighborhood, past the park and arrived, as per usual, at the entry of The Echoplex. Wristband secured, I proceeded to enter the venue only to be immediately washed away by a wave of deliberately careless nostalgia and the angst filled momentum of a hot blooded adolescent. The band was clad in snapbacks and duds reminiscent of a 90’s sale at a Marshalls in the Valley. I was hearing the melodies of Mac Demarco’s banner tracks, but at the tempo of a raucous garage rock house party. Songs trailed off into wild jams and rambled even further into senseless noise only to be seamlessly stitched back together in the form of various intoxicatingly absurd covers.
With shrill guitars and an almost surf, dub twang, the band belted out a passionate garage sound driven by heavy distorted drum breaks. An ironic cover
of Ramstein’s “Du Hast” transformed into a rendition of “She’s Really All I Need”, which spiraled into a grindy noisgasm that ran itself into the ground on a wild
solo that floated on a cacophony of palatable noisy distortion that brought up the rear. The obscure and eccentric nature of the show had the tunes flying from noise
rock to punk surf pop; and before you know it you knew it you were jamming out to ‘Taking Care of Business’ on the tail end of a noisy din.
Demarco crawled to the front of the stage and into the open arms of the front row during one of the last tracks and accepted a pull from a hot pink, rhinestoned
hip flask, passed to him from the crowd. I felt as drunk and carefree as the band seemed to be on stage and even got a warm fuzzy feeling when they decided to play ‘The Sweater Song’ By Weezer to really round out a night that felt more like a backyard band at a keg party than your usual night at The Echoplex.

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