Live Review: Paul Mac

It was a vintage diesel locomotive that sat on Platform 1 at Central Station, ready to transport the 100–150 or so excited bodies to a ‘secret location’ for Paul Mac’s album launch.

The crowd was a mixture of family members, friends and fans, with older hippies, lesbians and young sassy queers dressed in train conductor uniforms or extravagantly nonsensical neon drag costumes.  

The 45-minute journey was filled with train-related songs, the first being Trans-Europe Express by Kraftwerk, blasted from speakers inside a solar-powered wheelie bin, decked out in love heart-shaped glitter stickers. It was close to 8.30pm when the train arrived at Cronulla Station and we were led to church-turned-library-turned-Italian-restaurant, The Old Library.  

Paul Mac jumped on the decks and played tracks from the new album, Holiday From Me, grinning ear to ear throughout his entire set, flicking his horizontal jazz hands side to side and projecting his unlimited positive energy into the audience. Before playing Idiot, he announced, “I worked out today that three of my ex-lovers were on the train. This song is about one of them. Try and figure out which one it is.” 

Local Sydney songstress Ngaiire hopped on stage and busted out some loud, soulful vocals for Mystery To Me and Exit Strategy, followed by Tim Derricourt (front man of Dappled Cities) jumping on stage to sing Anechoic. The world’s “first gay duet”, Brendan McLean and Nathan Hudson (former lead singer of alt rock band Faker) took to the stage to perform Faq, before the final track Not Even Jesus, featuring Dave Mason, which felt a little slow and choir-like but somehow summed up the evening well enough.

“Music is such a fucking crucial part of my life, I have all my friends here tonight and that’s why this room is so full of life,” Mac admitted, beaming and fluttering off to join the party before the train transported everyone back to Central Station minutes before midnight.