Mac DeMarco finds quiet bliss on ‘Five Easy Hot Dogs’
A count-off is all you’ll get. Throughout the 14 tracks of the new Mac DeMarco album, Five Easy Hot Dogs, a quick verbal count-in on album opener ‘Gualala’ will be the only time you hear DeMarco’s voice. For the rest of the roughly half-an-hour spent with the new LP, melodies and hooks are reserved for guitar lines and synthesiser buzz. Other times, they’re abandoned completely.
As DeMarco embarked on a solo trip across the pacific northwest of America, the lower reaches of Canada, and the sprawling cityscape of Chicago, all he had with him was some basic recording equipment. Each new city gave its feeling to one or two songs on the album, and they were all written, recorded, and mixed in the same cities that give each song its respective name.
Even for a slacker-rock icon like DeMarco, that’s a pretty nebulous idea holding an entire album together. With most songs rarely blasting past the two-minute mark, it feels almost as if Five Easy Hot Dogs could fade away right in front of you at any moment. But that sense of fleetingness works in the album’s favour: just like his ambient heroes, DeMarco is making music that’s just as interesting to pay attention to as it is to ignore.
The times when Five Easy Hot Dogs hits its marks best are when you have to lean in closer to get the full effect. The French Horn-like swells that bubble up in ‘Crescent City’ fall into that category, as do the strange and itchy percussion additions to ‘Chicago 2’. When DeMarco decides he wants to try out minor key jazz on ‘Edmonton 2’ or spacey flamenco on ‘Victoria’, he breaks out a few more instruments and layers to try to realise his vision.
A lot of the time, however, there’s not enough going on to really hold your attention. Most songs get away with simple acoustic guitar strums and basic drum machine beats, like on ‘Portland’ and ‘Gualala 2’. While the absence of more thorough arrangements fits with DeMarco’s quick and dirty method of recording, it still makes most of the music on Five Easy Hot Dogs feel like sketches instead of real songs.
As is the case with all instrumental albums, sometimes the tracks feel remarkably inspired, and other times they spin their wheels without going anywhere. Are there extra layers beyond the basic setups? If you squint your ears hard enough, there sure are. Does it often go beyond the realm of lo-fi study music that you can easily access on YouTube? Probably not.
Five Easy Hot Dogs mostly just finds DeMarco making shit up and playing whatever comes to him, whether it’s finished or fleshed-out. Most of the time, it’s not. But if you need some quality studying music, Five Easy Hot Dogs will be perfect in that capacity. As always seems to be the case, DeMarco shines without doing very much at all, making Five Easy Hot Dogs perhaps the ultimate endpoint to his search for maximum chillage.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.