Mk.Gee Brings His Unsettling, Undeniable Swag Home to Asbury Park

This story first ran in Hell Gate, a worker-owned, subscriber-funded news outlet about New York City. As a fellow cooperative publication, we are excited to share this review of Mk.Gee's recent show at the legendary Stone Pony. Hell Gate is a great read even if you don't live in the city—check them out and consider subscribing if you love their work like we do!

When I saw the line wrapped around the block at Asbury Park, the first question I asked myself is: “Am I too old to be here?” 

They were young people, ones so dedicated to Michael Todd Gordon, the South Jersey musician known as Mk.Gee, that they wanted the first shot at being front and center at the Stone Pony, the beachside venue made famous by Bruce Springsteen. The second thing I noticed was that the parking lot was not as full of cars from New York as I expected—this was a local crowd. “Is this my hometown or what?” Mk.Gee called to the crowd when he got on stage. (He was born and raised in Linwood, further south in Atlantic County).  

Mostly local. Eventually I did see a few city slickers—other music journalists who had driven down, publicists, and industry types like the three people next to me in line, a trio that included two young men with mullets and mustaches, and a graying man who sounded like an executive, or at least was talking about who he knew that was getting passive income from their song popped off on Instagram Reels. There were indeed musicians in the crowd, hungrily scoping out Mk.Gee’s famously elaborate live rig, which looked to include Eurorack modular synthesizers, racks of studio processors, guitar effects pedalboards, and a laptop running a visible autotune plugin shamelessly.

In another lifetime, Mk.Gee would be trapped the ghetto of YouTube gear freaks, but the force of his persona—mulleted, enigmatic, taking a wide stance on stage in combat boots with the unsettling energy of an ROTC obsessive—it just works. When Timothée Chalamet needed a gimmick for his Saturday Night Live performances of Bob Dylan songs, he visibly pilfered the white boy swag Mk.Gee had brought to that stage just months before. 

You guys want to talk about “recession indicators”? I knew white boys were back on top as soon as I saw Mk.Gee was plugging direct into that damn Tascam mixer on his last tour. When he pointed a gun at his Eurorack on his latest single cover, I should have bet big on Trump on Polymarket. That’s in the past now, and I have no idea what Gordon’s politics actually are. But with all the talk of the search for “the Left’s answer to Joe Rogan,” is it so wrong to imagine that a softboy heartthrob might have a better shot at reaching these guys than Ezra Klein? (Just thinking out loud.) It’s been a long time since I’ve seen kids scream along to lyrics with such a fervor, and one young man in a backwards trucker hat and mustache in the front was absolutely zoning out in ecstasy, totally transported. 

The lyrics these mulleted, jean-jacketed kids were screaming along to? On record, they’re submerged in a cypher-like amalgamation of Jai Paul murmur and drugged-out mumble rap slur, until a wail like “I need you tonight!” sails out from a bed of samples and affected guitar. He has noise-gated effects on his guitar, so that forceful strums are not just forceful, they’re explosive, almost annoying. YouTube videos on how to replicate that guitar tone get views in the hundreds of thousands, and if you keep an ear out you can hear imitations of it springing up like daisies in popular music these days.

The overall sonic effect is of digital overwhelm, a wall of sound design so trademark Mk.Gee that at one point, I swear to God, the audience heard literal tape hiss and recognized the upcoming song with a roar of cheers. Every sound, like a dribbled almost-sitar digital guitar outro to his biggest “hit,” the singalong “Are You Looking Up,” becomes so disembodied, that even technical sloppiness becomes the point, part of the Mk.Gee magic. It’s a sensibility sort of borrowed from hyperpop, with audio like airhorns and his trademark eagle screech able to halt a song for the meme. But at the center of it all are Mk.Gee’s songs, with their emo R&B hearts worn proudly on their sleeves, and to the audience of devotees, nothing could be more serious.