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“Seattle was part of the Everything In Transit story,” Andrew McMahon told the crowd before playing “Miss Delaney,” the song he wrote about a woman he met while he was in Seattle recording the Something Corporate album North. The crowd erupted enthusiastically in response to the song’s introduction. It was clear McMahon had a soft spot in his heart for Seattle, and judging by the sold out crowd at Showbox SoDo, the city reciprocated the love for McMahon and his musical project, Jack’s Mannequin.

The “MFEO” tour, which celebrates 20 years since the release of Jack’s Mannequin’s debut album Everything In Transit, was originally announced in January. Seattle, one of the final stops of the last leg of the tour on November 19, sold out immediately, meaning fans had been waiting in anticipation for nearly a year for this show. The anticipation filled the 2,000 capacity room on the evening of Nov. 19 with many fans showing up early and lining up outside the venue before doors in the chilly Pacific Northwest winter. Alongside Jack’s Mannequin tees, fans also showed their support for McMahon’s other musical projects, with many sporting Something Corporate or Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness merchandise.

Fellow Southern Californian rockers, illuminati hotties from Los Angeles, opened the show for Jack’s Mannequin. Similar to Jack’s Mannequin, illuminati hotties don’t confine themselves to the constraints of one genre. They opened their set with the surf pop jam “Can’t Be Still,” and towards the end of the set, vocalist Sarah Tudzin was rocking out in the crowd with the more punk-inspired “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA.” I thought I hadn’t heard Illuminati hotties before their performance, but after watching their set, I realized I had been introduced to them through their  pop-punk song “Wreck My Life,” which features the band PUP.

After illuminati hotties’ energetic performance, the crowd was definitely ready for Jack’s Mannequin. McMahon and his band were ready, too — they opened the show with “I’m Ready,” the upbeat fourth track from Everything In Transit. It was far from “a boring pop song” as the lyrics suggest, but everyone was singing along. McMahon played the keys with a huge smile on his face. The second song of the evening, “Spinning” from The Glass Passenger, saw him dancing and spinning around the piano. McMahon followed “Spinning” with “The Mixed Tape,” also from the landmark album celebrating its 20 year anniversary, jumping off the piano for the first of several jumps of the evening. Later, McMahon joked that it was his favorite jump and he does it a lot since it’s the only jump he knows how to do. 

Jack’s Mannequin played all 10 of the original tracks from their debut album, Everything In Transit, during their 21 song set list, and even included one of the bonus B-sides, “Last Straw, AZ,” which was well received by the Seattle crowd. As McMahon belted the lyrics, “Sometimes it’s all that I can do when I think about the President. How did he become the President?” the crowd cheered. He preceded the song with its backstory of how he wrote it when Bush was president, but the song felt relevant to play in this current time period, a sentiment the audience concurred with.

As McMahon played through Everything In Transit, he included snippets of the history of certain songs’ inspiration or the recording process, engaging the audience and taking us back in time with him. We learned that “Bruised,” for example, originally came into the studio as a “dreary long ballad.” John Wirt, the producer he worked with on the album, asked, “What if you just have the drums be twice as fast?” “It created this push and pull with the energy of the record,” McMahon explained.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an Andrew McMahon performance without the crowdsurfing on an inflatable he’s known for. The inflatable llama made its appearance before “La La Lie,” and McMahon surfed on the llama down to the soundboard, where he picked up the name of the winner for the auction he did before the show to raise money for his charity, the Dear Jack Foundation. After announcing the winning bidder, he carried the prize — a signed drumhead —back to the front of the crowd to its respective winner.

Jack’s Mannequin closed out their set with “Dark Blue,” with correlating lighting to match, of course, before returning to the stage for an encore of the last two tracks from Everything In Transit: “Rescued” and the namesake of the tour, “MFEO – Pt. 1: Made For Each Other, Pt. 2 You can Breathe,” the perfect ending to a possibly perfect set list and perfect show. The nostalgia of the evening stuck with with me long after the show, too — I found myself listening to Everything In Transit on repeat on the train ride home and thinking back to the time in my life when the album first came out.

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