Photo by Nicole Busch
On May 18th, Mk.gee played a raucous sold out show at Theatre of Living Arts in Philly. The line to get inside the show snaked around various buildings and streets. There was no opener for the show at all and the audience was very mixed, made of people young and old, all there to see him. Michael Gordon aka Mk.gee makes alternative r&b music, which uses a unique type of synth-based guitar with introspective & often romantic lyrics. In February of this year, he released his debut studio album ’Two Star & The Dream Police’. He is also known for being a producer for artists such as Dijon.
Although Mk.gee first released music in 2017, he’s come into the spotlight and been doing bigger tours and shows since the recent album. The energy in the room as people waited for Mk.gee to go on was electric. The lighting was mostly the same throughout the set, shrouded in darkness with a little bit of light. He opened up the set with the last track on the album, ‘Dream police’. The live setup for the band was a three piece – Mk.gee on guitar and vocals, an accompanying guitarist Andrew Aged also on vocals, and a percussionist/ sampler musician Zack Sekoff.
Throughout the set Mk.gee mentioned how much he loves Philly and that he is originally from New Jersey, so the show felt like a homecoming of sorts for him. He also mentioned that his voice was ‘very shot’ and had the audience sing along short parts of the set for him, although his voice sounded crystal clear and smooth. He played every song from the album, some highlights of the show were ‘I Want’ and ‘DNM’, as well as the second to last song ‘Are You Looking Up’ which they recently performed on TV on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It was clear that he was having a great time onstage and the audience was having a blast too. After he played the final song ‘Breakthespell’ he said something like ‘Fuck it, let’s do one more’ and then played the haunted-sounding tune ‘Alesis’. The band came back for an encore and he played the songs ‘Candy’ and ‘DNM’ a second time, in an unusual move, but the crowd was ecstatic to hear them again. We can only hope Mk.gee will come back on tour soon, (this was the second to last night of the tour), as this was an incredible performance from him and his band.
Review by Jay Leiby
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