"Alright," I hear you say, "what more can be gleaned from Mac DeMarco's frequent late night talk show visits?" Admittedly, he does show up a lot on the circuit, bringing his perpetually chorus pedal-ed Stratocaster and affable tunes with him wherever he goes, but his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is special for two reasons.One is that he met fellow guest Tom Hanks, who was there to argue with Stephen Colbert about Christmas trees. Mac shared a not-at-all awkward photo of the two hanging out backstage on his Instagram:
Advertisement
Several questions:1. Is Hanks hover-handing Mac? Does he think it suffice just to point at him as if to say "this is a youth, I am glad to meet it and I hope it does not eat me."2. Going by his cheeky location tag, Mac is big on Forrest Gump, but has he watched Hanks' best film role in Cloud Atlas? (Cloud Atlas is not actually the best Tom Hanks film or a good film at all but please watch it when you have three hours to spare because we need weirder movies like it in the world).3. Mac is wearing a bizarre (custom?) T-shirt by artist Matthew Volz that has himself and Hanks starring in a Da Vinci Code/Garfield crossover. How long did it take Mac to explain the irreverent millennial humour that led to this?4. In general, whom out of these two is the least good at placing their hands while having their photo taken?Yeah, it could have been a smoother meeting. What doesn't need any more smoothing-out was Mac's performance on Colbert, the second reason this visit was special. He basically just joined Jon Batiste's regular house band and jammed through the This Old Dog cut "One Another" accompanied by buttery horns and tinkling piano; it's overall the least scrappy presentation his sophisticated music has ever received. It goes to show that Mac's true musical form is making Weather Channel jazz for punk kids, and he's never sounded more at home than here. That's not a diss, either. Watch the performance of "One Another" below.
Phil is on Twitter.