The inadvertent genius of this gig was that Mac DeMarco turned the stage into his own private house party, putting a group of a dozen friends sitting at the back left corner of the stage; they were drinking and smoking throughout, even chatting occasionally. DeMarco himself chainsmoked through songs, swigged from a bottle of Jamesons and was dressed in floppy hat and shorts, a great wardrobe for a canoe trip. And then it just so happened that the front was open to the Red Marquee audience, so the other 4,000 or 5,000 of us were also let in it all. I was never quite sure if we were an audience or merely just voyeurs to his musical antics, except when he asked everyone to sing along.

DeMarco, from Edmonton, Canada, is becoming something like a Jimmy Buffett for the millennial generation, heading a new wave of stoner balladeers (The Growlers, Mild High Club) who play the baby-making music for (mostly?) caucasian hipsters. He’s an adorable clown on stage, and he did in fact sing most of the songs to the audience. There were several hilarious moments, and some very casual cameos from his house party guests at the back. Post Malone sat in on shakers, perhaps an hour before he performed on the White Stage. There was a guitarist whose name I couldn’t catch but was wearing and MGMT badge and played on several songs. And in the most quirkily genius moment of all, the band’s Japanese tour manager was called out to sing most of the final song, a cover of “Sukiyaki”, Japan’s international 1960s hit. The audience completely ate it up, singing along on that tune and many of DeMarco’s other hits. DeMarco seems to understand that his audiences now can sing quite a lot of his lyrics, so his main job on stage is to have as much fun as possible and, as a sort of a by-product, entertain them. And that is what he most certainly did.