Mac DeMarco review – glowing melodies and shirtless antics at Carnegie Hall

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…