Mac Demarco has outstanding rock and rolling and face-making skills. (Graham Clark/Neon Tommy)

Reporting for this story was contributed by Chhaya Nene.

What ends up on the ground says a lot about a show.  Nothing smells like scrappy-hometown-hero-band the way a floor sticky with spilled Pilsner tack does. House sets and other EDM shitshows tend to litter little baggies of light powder, set free from one anxious pocket check too many.

Amongst the crushed cigarette packs, spent 50 ml booze bottles and Sapporo tallboys, a glance around the Echoplex’s floor Friday night turned up the lens hood for a Cannon LH-DC60 and a five panel cap from L.A. cut-and-sew enterprise Quiet Life. Descriptions of Mac Demarco shows could give to give off that accusatory ‘hipster-bashing’ vibe, or be goofily positive in a way that smacks out of touch with the blasé and persnickety nature of day-to-day human interaction. But these things are just facts. Someone dropped a high-end camera accessory on the ground during Demarco’s set, and someone else let go of a Quiet Life five piece with a universe nebula pattern printed on it. If that was you, I found your hat.

AUDIO: Click here to hear Mac Demarco's closing medly, including "Together"

Just about every other detail of the show has been covered one way or another already. Demarco invited the whole of the audience onstage with him after the show, and much to security staff’s stymied chagrin, some 50 fans took him up on the offer. There was a flurry of smartphone interfacing as the throng transmuted their experience into a digitized record in real-time. At center stage, the night’s headlining performer answered inquiries from everyone that asked, wore people’s hats, laughed lots, accepted loose cigarettes and otherwise spent an altogether not insubstantial amount of time posing for pictures and getting to know his fans.

AUDIO: Click here to hear Mac Demarco's version of "Undone - The Sweater Song," originally by Weezer

These flesh-and-blood interactions are a big part of how Demarco has been attention, too. In my South By Southwest coverage, I included his name in a piece on lesser-known bands looking to enhance their reputations by tearing up mondo swaths of shows. Part of what I wrote then is still true: Demarco and his band are an uproariously A-OK rock act, and they do numbers only the most stolid of losers could sit through without having a good time. This much was evident at the Echoplex, where the 22-year-old’s understandably lean repertoire got padding penned by Weezer and George Michael with some weird metal influences in addition to their now-standard Rammstein-Dave-Brubeck-Limp-Bizkit medley. Also, for whatever reason, the chorus from “Taking Care of Business” was especially kickass last night.

But the idea that Mac Demarco is some kind of rarified sleeper hit has come to be totally inappropriate. Concert organizers had originally slated his appearance for the Echo, the building's smaller venue with an entrance on Sunset. But that sold out so fast, they relocated to the bigger room downstairs, with a capacity of 325. Then that sold out too. Fast. Not bad for a bucktoothed kid from Montreal, whose act basically consists of wrangling one hell of a ratchet secondhand guitar.

Though it illustrated the amazing level of steam his act has built up in only a couple long years, Demarco treated the evening with a genteel irreverence. When asked to share his thoughts on last night’s happening, he said he was simply happy to see “everyone's so sexy.”

Given that it was a collection of tongue-in-cheek pseudo-lark riffs that put him on the map in the first place (his album “Rock And Roll Nightclub,” released all the way back in 2012) there’s may be some Schadenfreude-laced reason to imagine the group’s songwriting and showleading abilities faltering under the mushrooming weight of this honest to goodness success. Hot mess successes are said to have a way of melting down. But maybe not.

Perhaps by releasing his love-worthy sophomore effort right-quick, and earning much of his current widespread admiration off the strength of that, Demarco deflected the ‘Sophomore Slump’ stigma that deflates bands prematurely ballooned in stature. Life and music are full of new standards being established, and when something starts working for a lot of people there’ll be a lot of attention on not letting it get derailed.

Also, I didn’t remember to fit this anywhere organically, but the bands that opened for Demarco were pretty great. Especially Calvin Love, who sounded a lot like Iggy Pop does on that song “Punkrocker.”

Read more of NT's show coverage here.

Reach Staff Cartoonist Graham Clark here. Follow him on Twitter here.