In the drunken debauchery that pervaded College Hill on Spring Weekend, as many students staggered down Thayer and waded through the broken glass and discarded Natural Light cans on Angell, it was easy to miss the supreme musical talent that graced the Main Green on Saturday night. There, Mac DeMarco and his band of merry misfits took the stage and delivered a rock ‘n’ roll show of rare quality.
And what a rare phrase to hear in 2016: “rock ‘n’ roll.” As college students in this age, we are bombarded by the music of the day, which has all but abandoned the rocking tendencies of our forefathers. Live music is dominated by D.J.s behind their MacBook Pros and rappers acting more as hype men than actual performers as their tracks play behind them. And while I’ve had many massive nights at shows like these, I find myself yearning for the spontaneity, imperfection and nervous energy that only a live band with loud drums and cranked amps can provide.
From the start of Saturday’s show, it was clear that DeMarco’s jams would bring precisely this aesthetic to my tired eyes and nauseous ears. In a style reminiscent of decades of Grateful Dead shows, the band waded into the show gently. Woozy guitars backed DeMarco’s smooth baritone as the sun set behind University Hall. Keyboardist Hippie John lazed in the background, sometimes contributing to the music, other times puffing cigarettes and staring at the crowd behind dark sunglasses. And just like at any Dead concert, a thick haze of weed smoke began to fill the orange sky. The illicit stench was a welcome alternative to the stink of spilt beer that permeated many spots on campus by Saturday afternoon. In the same way, DeMarco offered a respite from the clutter all around, cutting through the noise with clean guitar solos.
The band brought a local feel unusual for an act that’s played everywhere from Brooklyn to Auckland. An early shoutout to the East Side Mini Mart was followed by psychedelic projections from a familiar setting. Videos of band members dancing with an animated dinosaur in front of the V-Dub, chilling on the Meeting Street benches and sitting on couches in Faunce played repeatedly on the LED screen at the back of the stage. This endearing move was furthered by the constant interaction between the band and the crowd, with DeMarco bowing to our demand to hear the mysterious Hippie John speak and noting the addresses of places to hang after the show.
At one point, bassist Pierce McGarry grew exasperated with the chit chat, saying there were two ways the show could go: “We can talk, or we can rock.” What followed was a suitable balance of the two. I appreciated DeMarco’s acknowledgment that this music stuff need not be so serious, that there is always room for pauses, interruptions and shenanigans outside a dining hall or a quick smoke between tunes.
The shift in mood that overtook the band as the night went on is what elevated this show from a pleasant evening outing to the majestic display of rock bombast it became. The slacker tunes that fill DeMarco’s albums gave way to overdriven jams and drawn out interludes. A crowd that had swayed gently now moved violently, filled with the same power that drove the music. The band further increased the energy by taking turns surfing the crowd, bumming cigs and at least one birthday hat in the process. This crescendoed in a brief instrumental cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which turned the mass of usually tame Ivy Leaguers into a pack of crazed lunatics. Just as the surfer searches for the perfect wave or the vintner for the perfect grape, these moments of joy, of the collective euphoria of a crowd moving to the soundtrack of crashing drums and wailing guitars, are what I seek most from live music. And for the first time since I arrived in Providence, DeMarco delivered the goods.
In a move of suave maturity, the frontman calmed the proceedings for the final song, a ballad of love sung with his girlfriend on stage. Before leaving, he reassured all with a manner smoother than a Bing Crosby croon that, “The night is still young.” He left us with the hope that the good times needn’t end here, that as spring arrives and the trees blossom, our spirits can lift and our battered souls can be made whole. And how apt a reminder it is in an environment where complacency can so easily taint our appreciation for the beauty of our situation. As if to hammer this message home, the band returned to the stage for a triumphant cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” The crowd was first filled with the spastic energy from earlier and next with awe as the song was lost in drone and feedback while DeMarco ripped the strings from his guitar like a Canadian Jimi Hendrix. After witnessing this quintessentially rock ‘n’ roll display, we returned to the April night filled with his passion and a transformed perspective of what live music can be in 2016.
Ronan O’Shea ’19 can be reached at ronan_oshea@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
