Hate Music? Love Indie? Declan McKenna is the Show to See

If someone was a teenager who was into music and on social media in 2020, it’s likely that they might’ve been exposed to the brightly coloured indie aesthetic and its pairing with Declan Mckenna’s hit song “Brazil”. While the melodic indie anthem that criticizes the 2014 FIFA World Cup has become McKenna’s magnum opus, don't be too quick to dismiss his talent for cynical lyrics, distorted guitar riffs, and energetic stage presence. 

    Like many others, I was introduced to Declan McKenna through his 2017 debut album What Do You Think About the Car? and continued to explore his work with Zeros in 2020 at the height of his popularity. While I’ve not been an extensive listener, I’ve found that the handful of songs I discovered in early high school have held up. The lead single for his most recent album Nothing Works is one of my favourite songs released in the past year, but I was disappointed by the rest of the album at the time of its release. Thankfully, I recently discovered that the live rendition of the 2024 album Whatever Happened to the Beach? entirely makes up for my original lack of enthusiasm. 

    In my eyes, the Olympia Theatre, where Declan Mckenna was set to perform on October 18th, is the perfect concert venue. Beautiful adornments frame the stage, and the layered floor prevents squeezing and pushing to the barricade for the best view; the environment at the Olympia pre-show always feels comfortable, and the 18th was no exception. The demographic seemed almost exclusively young adults, a sea of Doc Martens and curtain bangs, girls and their boyfriends who all fell prey to the pandemic’s affinity for indie music and nostalgia. I was unsure about how the crowd’s energy would hold up during the performance; would they jump up and down as I hoped, or would they only sing along to Brazil as I worried? They were welcoming for the opener, Vlad Holiday, whose sound and physical appearance was so similar to McKenna’s that for a few minutes, I was convinced that the opener had been skipped and the crowd was really unfamiliar with McKenna’s music. Luckily my doubts dissipated when Holiday exclaimed ‘Who’s excited for Declan!!??’ and the room erupted into cheers. 

Soon enough, McKenna and his band (a keyboardist, drummer, bassist and secondary guitarist) appeared and jumped into a show full of distorted guitars and clean vocals. The musician sported a shirt reading “Hate Music? Love Indie.” and seemed to be aware of both the crowd’s excitement and his popularity, teasing “You guys wanna hear Brazil already!?” before diving into a diverse set. I was happy to experience upbeat energy from both onstage and the crowd during songs such as ‘The Key to Life on Earth’, and ‘Beautiful Faces’; the audience enthusiastically obliged to the latter song’s lyrics ‘lift your hands up’. Of course, when ‘Brazil’ was finally played, the fans went wild, everyone screaming and singing along. 

However, I feel that the real highlight of the show was the encore. When Mckenna and his band left the stage, the Olympia immediately filled with cheers, whistles, and to my surprise, a chant that I’ve only heard in sports stadiums (maybe I’m incorrect and ‘olé’ is commonly used to call an encore? If someone has experienced this, please weigh in). Riding off of the crowd’s electricity, McKenna did something fairly uncommon for an encore - performed a new song! The audience and I tried to soak it in, but I’m pretty sure many of us were thinking the same thing: ‘please play British Bombs’, which to everyone’s delight, he did. The politically charged anthem is, in my eyes, objectively his best song, and the climactic bridge makes it the perfect scream-along encore track. The room was enraptured as McKenna paced the stage, taking long pauses in between the bridge’s verses for dramatic effect, embracing his British mod rockstar demeanour to the max. The dancing that ensued after McKenna broke the bridge and jumped into the final chorus was all I had been hoping for from the show, and I am happy to report I received all that and more.