Mac DeMarco — Five Easy Hot Dogs — Album Review
Alternative | Indie | Blues | Instrumental
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music
When it comes to Canadian Singer-Songwriter Mac DeMarco, I had been enjoying his music for quite a few years. To be exact, I started listening to him in the midst of 2017 (one of the most impactful years of my life, for better or worse). As a result, it was those tunes that I discovered back then, namely ones like “Chamber of Reflection”, “Salad Days”, “My Kind of Woman” and “On The Level” that I remember most fondly.
There was always such a soothing feeling about those kinds of tracks that Mac DeMarco made, regardless of the mood that he would be going for with each respective track. Upbeat or otherwise, everything had an immensely immersive vibe to it. A big part of that would of course be DeMarco’s signature vocal style, which is rightfully beloved by many fans.
In more recent years, however, things have been a little more of a bitter pill to swallow (for lack of a better term), and the follow-up to This Old Dog (the 2017 album in which the aforementioned “On The Level” features on, came in the form of 2019’s Here Comes The Cowboy.
That very album turned out to be one of the most disappointing that the year of 2019 had to offer, mainly due to the fact that all of that vibrant goodness had gone for the most part, in place of what just felt like typical lo-fi indie numbers. Where exactly the more beloved qualities went; I still don’t know to this day.
Given the fact that this disappointing project remained Mac Demarco’s most current album, up until very recently, it was fair to say that myself (and I imagine many others), felt an anxiety-tinged sense of anticipation towards Five Easy Hot Dogs, Mac DeMarco’s brand new album.
Going into this new album, my biggest hope was that we would hear the kind of sound that felt abundant on albums like Salad Days once more. My biggest fear was that it would just end up sounding like Here Comes The Cowboy again. It turns out, that Five Easy Hot Dogs kind of made neither of those possibilities a reality. Moreso, it stood as a case of things going from bad, to worse.
For all of those excited to hear Mac DeMarco’s soothing vocal style for the first time in almost four years, jokes on you; there are no vocals to be heard. None at all.
You read that last part correctly; Five Easy Hot Dogs is a completely instrumental album. Furthermore, it’s one of those “road trip” albums, which includes songs that serve as musical love letters to locales like “Portland”, “Vancouver” and “Chicago”. But let’s be real, is this really a new concept?
Now, I wouldn’t normally have too much of an issue with an artist taking an instrumental approach on an album. It can sometimes be a well-needed and refreshing addition to ones discography. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with Mac DeMarco and Five Easy Hot Dogs, that is essentially Here Comes The Cowboy without the vocals.
With the instrumentation being the full bread-and-butter of this album, one might expect there to at least be a few unique elements. On the contrary, however, this album fsits amongst some of the most stale musical projects in recent years. I never thought there would be an album from Mac DeMarco to make even the likes of Here Comes The Cowboy sound remarkable by comparison. But that feels like the only thing this album has truly achieved, aside from being a set of mildly ambient lo-fi tunes.
Where we have had a first month of the year that has been surprisingly disappointing in 2023, even by January standards, I feel that Five Easy Hot Dogs stands as an apt reflection of the general dullness that we’ve had to trudge through. Let’s just hope things get better from here on out.
Mac’s Record Label
