Mac DeMarco Turns Denver’s Mission Ballroom Into a Delightfully Unhinged Playground (SHOW REVIEW)

Canadians Mac DeMarco and Mock Media kookily commandeered Denver’s Mission Ballroom on May 3rd, completely selling out the roughly 4,000-person venue. 

To kick things off, up-and-comers Mock Media, a four-piece band, set the stage nicely for Mac DeMarco’s hilarious musical antics. Comprised of Evan Aasen and Austin Boylan wielding electric guitars, Bennett Smith behind the drum kit, and Garnet Aronyk on bass guitar, the group played a wonky, high-energy, dubbed-out set, bringing up the liveliness in the building nicely before DeMarco took the stage and settled things down a bit with his six-string acoustic guitar and soothing high-pitched falsetto vocals. Although eventually Mac did ramp the vibes back up in his own way with hits such as “For the First Time”, an extended version of “Freaking Out the Neighborhood”, and the title track from 2014’s Salad Days, among others.

DeMarco’s “Guitar Tour” finally landed in Denver after initially stopping at other cities in the U.S. shortly after the August 2025 release of his most recent album, simply and aptly titled Guitar, before moving on to Europe, his native Canada, and Asia, eventually coming full circle back to North America. Taking the stage with keyboardist and Denver native Alec Meen in tow, Mac made sure the night was a truly Colorado affair, including playing the Meen-penned “Home”, which Meen says is an ode to Denver. Goofy, Denver-related banter pockmarked the set, one of the best examples being DeMarco’s comment that when Meen was born, “he fell from the vagina of Blucifer” (Blucifer being the legendary 9,000-pound, 32-foot-tall mustang statue stationed outside Denver International Airport).

Other members of the band include Daryl Johns on bass guitar, Phil Melanson playing drums, and Pedro Martin sharing guitar duties with DeMarco himself. Shortly after a fiery solo delivered by Martin on “Rock and Roll”, during which Mac crouched in the shadows and let the spotlights fall solely on Martin, Mac tells the applauding crowd, “Pedro’s from Brazil. You can believe it or you can… you can go fuck yourself.” This comment, and many others, was delivered by DeMarco in an unidentifiably silly accent, one of over a dozen he utilized throughout the night to keep the crowd in stitches during song transitions. There was no shortage of song transitions, either, considering Mac and the band played roughly two dozen different songs. Impressively, over half of the tracks from Guitar were covered, as well as cuts from 2012’s Rock and Roll Night Club, 2012’s 2, 2014’s Salad Days, 2015’s Another One, 2017’s This Old Dog, 2019’s Here Comes the Cowboy, and even a performance of “20191009 I Like Her” from 2023’s roughly nine-hour 199-track project One Wayne G.

Adding to the zany atmosphere, DeMarco purposefully introduced half a dozen songs incorrectly, falsely telling the crowd three different times that he was about to play “My Kind of Woman”. Humorously, the song was eventually played during the rousing encore. At another point, Mac says, “This song is called ‘Rock and Roll Night Club,” then launches straight into “Heart to Heart” instead. When introducing “Little Dogs March”, DeMarco amusingly dedicates the tune to “My hound back home and also the canine sniffing for bombs backstage earlier.” During an instrumental break played by the band during a rendition of the title track from 2015’s Another One, Mac performs a handstand, which he holds for an impressively long time. At this point the line between concert and Canadian circus had been heavily blurred. The show was becoming a Cirque du Salad Days, if you will. Toward the end of the set, DeMarco admits, “I’m a bit of a jackass, but thank you for coming out tonight.”

Closing out the night, Mac plays his smash hit Chamber of Reflection, exits, and eventually re-enters for a standing ovation-induced encore. In his jocular, oddball style, he steals a cymbal from the drumkit on his walk back to center stage, smacks it repeatedly with the head of his electric guitar, throws the cymbal to the ground and asks the crowd “Una mas?” half a dozen times in the highest falsetto he can muster. He bursts into “My Kind of Woman”, commanding the crowd to “Sing, fuckers!”. As a finale, he lets the band play as he throws his guitar higher and higher in the air, catching it and launching it another twenty feet toward the ceiling and catching it again, before finally fumbling the catch and walking off stage as the instrument clatters to the ground. Nothing less should be expected of a world-class showman such as the wacky Mac DeMarco.

Pictures by Sam Hovsepian

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