Independent Music

Live – Thao with The Get Down Stay Down @ The Troubadour, LA

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down concluded their national tour with Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside on Monday night at the Troubador in LA. The tour was in support of their latest, “We The Common,” an album that shows great maturity, musicianship, and even civic-mindedness over “We Brave Bee Stings And All.” Seeing Thao on stage, it was clear where her passions now lie, namely that WTC is about a lot more than the songs on the album and Thao’s work with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners is pervasive.  By 5 songs into the set, Thao had already flipped through virtually every instrument on the stage. It was impressive to behold. And yet, for all her artistic maturity, she nevertheless has been able to retain that youthful spunkiness I was first drawn to in 2008. That spunkiness was never felt stronger than when “Move” transitioned into a medley with Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy?” or perhaps on her duet with Sallie for their cover of The Ronettes’ “Be My Little Baby.” The pointedness of Thao’s songwriting is almost comically genius, with playful, scathing lines like ” I was always on your conscience, but you were only on my mind” and “don’t we live too long, don’t you wait too much” and the onstage delivery is equally ironically cute. Further, songs like “Kindness Be Conceived” translate wonderfully despite Joanna Newsom’s absence. Her time away from the spotlight seems to have done great things for her, but it’s great to have her back. Sallie Ford’s performance was equally fun, having an almost doo-wop sound and instantly danceable. Songs like “Fried Green Tomatoes,” though somewhat silly, were incredibly fun and perfectly compliments the Thao fanbase. Though I’d not heretofor known Sallie Ford, I’m sold as a huge fan.

-Cory Greenwell

Live – Mac Demarco @ Sneaky Dees, Toronto, ON

“And you’re opening for Phoenix on their European tour after this, that’s crazy! How the hell did that happen!?”

Demarco just kinda looks at me with a grin and a shrug.

Oh, I donno. They just came to one of our shows in Paris and liked what they saw, I guess.

The cool ambivalence toward what would otherwise be a career-defining moment for an up and coming band is a good summation of Mac Demarco’s appeal; that being to forgo taking life too seriously in favor of having a good time, an approach that shines through in both his recorded material and his live show.

Mac Demarco is a young man who began making music in Vancouver years ago with his friend Alex Calder under the moniker of Makeout Videotape, before relocating to Montreal and focusing on developing his own material. Last year saw the release of not one but two albums, the vampire-glam of his debut, Rock and Roll Night Club, and the breezy, slacker-rock leaning 2.

His show on Friday, March 22nd, at Sneaky Dee’s, was the first in a series of shows he and his band played as a part of Canadian Music week before taking off to Europe for the aforementioned Phoenix tour. The sold-out set was attended by an army of young men decked out in plaid who spent the duration of the set pogo-ing manically in front of the band, while a harem of fangirls opted to sit at the bottom of the stage as if it were an altar of some sort.

I’m Mac Demarco, and this song is called ‘I’m A Man” , he announced through a toothy smile, kicking off a set that featured a healthy amount of material taken from across both of his albums.

Whereas the recorded material comes off as laid-back music not unsuitable for drinking on a porch in the summer sun, performed live, it takes on a new form, retaining the playful looseness while also gaining an electric groove a la Grease Lightning.

Having seen Demarco before, a staple of his shows for me has always been the esoteric covers he sprinkles throughout his set. He’s done stuff as varied as the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” and Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman” in the same show, and for Friday’s set he presented a cache of covers that was even more expanded and disparate. They fiddled with the opening riffs of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” between songs before launching into their first full cover of the night, a messy, adrenaline-filled take on Rammstein’s nu-metal anthem “Du Hast”. The highlight for the night in terms of covers occurred later, when the band delved into their own jangly take on Weezer’s Sweater Song. Although a lot of influence from the Blue Album can be noted in Demarco’s music, especially 2, the band made it their own by peppering the lyrics with goofy expletives, delivered by Demarco with the glee of a misbehaving 10-year-old.

The band’s endearing immaturity did not end there however, with Demarco evolving into some playground version of G.G. Allin towards the end of the set by charismatically displaying to the audience both his bare white ass (which some female audience members promptly attempted to spank), and eventually ramping up the sexual show-and-tell by pulling out his balls from his fly mid-song.

The band ended their set with “Still Together”, the closing ballad from their latest album. Demarco brought his girlfriend onstage to serenade her, however, as the band launched into a rocked-out, electrified version of the song’s bridge, the two began to make out before jumping into the audience to crowd-surf together in a display filled with the triumph of a scene taken from an 80’s teen movie. I left the venue that night covered in sweat, satisfied to have witnessed once again that Mac Demarco’s recent success is well-deserved.

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[photos : John Szlazak]