Michael Todd Gordon has produced one of the year’s defining guitar records… by accident. ‘Two Star & The Dream Police’ saw Mk.Gee elevated to colossal levels of critical acclaim, his woozy bedroom pop veering between 80s Heartland manoeuvres and Alex G home-taping experiments via R&B insouciance. Yet amidst the online hype, a void – Mk.gee shuns press, rarely does interviews, and scarcely intervenes on social media. A non-visible rock star, his latest London shows have sold out easily, and Brixton Electric is already at capacity when CLASH enters for the second of his triptych of feverishly anticipated live shows.
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The crowd are a wave of baseball caps and sweatshirts, the soubriquet ‘Mk.gee fan’ now broadening to absorb an entire look. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation in the air, with the pre-show soundsystem veering from Dire Straits’ air guitar anthems through to the grinding industrial production of Portishead’s ‘Machine Gun’.
A blinding white light pierces the stage, with Mk.gee and the second guitarist framing a drummer – the latter auspiciously given centre stage. Methodically breaking down the classic rock show format, the set plunges straight into ‘ROCKMAN’ the screams from the crowd reaching ear-bleeding levels within seconds.
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There’s a remarkable sense of union between crowd and performer, the people around me mouthing every word to every song. They’re colossal, fantastic pieces of songwriting, too – the live environment is their natural home, with Mk.gee’s rise fastened on the back of some bona fide anthems.
Recent album ‘Two Star & The Dream Police’ natural forms the fulcrum, but he’s able to bring in other aspects of his catalogue. It’s finessed and direct, the lack of onstage chat simply allowing Mk.gee to pack more songs in.
The directness of the music stands in opposition to a stage show that is often disorienting, and punctured with noise. Merging the gloss of his studio work to an animalistic thirst for expression, Mk.gee sits somewhere between ‘Graceland’ and ‘Darklands’, even interrupting his own songwriting with piercing yelps. It all send the crowd into a further, as though he’s testing them, and – in turn – they’re helping him raise the levels.
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Throughout, you never get the sense Mk.gee is entirely comfortable with the position he’s in. There’s a glow from the material, but he’s happy to remind partially obscured by both light and shade, at times dashing offstage, before returning to more waves of applause and appreciation.
In a telling moment, he hands his guitar to a young fan midway through the set – who then plays the guitar solo from ‘Candy’ note for note. It’s as though who plays it doesn’t matter, what truly matter is the song itself, a flow of information passing through a number of vessels.
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Keeping perhaps his two most successful songs – ‘Alesis’ and ‘Candy’ – for the climax, Mk.gee both embodies and deconstructs rock Babylon. It’s a showbiz trick, but it’s also perverse. Leaving to the roar of the crowd, you’re left with the impression that a new guitar hero has arrived – even if he isn’t 100% comfortable with that role.
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Words: Robin Murray
Photography: Matt Gorman
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