Mac DeMarco, Five Easy Hot Dogs: REVIEW

Mac DeMarco, Five Easy Hot Dogs (Mac’s Record Label)

After 2019’s hugely underwhelming Here Comes the Cowboy, Mac DeMarco clearly had to go back to the drawing board. With that, the former Montrealer has delivered a short-and-sweet 30-minute album full of feathery, unfinished-sounding instrumentals named after cities he recorded them in during a road trip (including two named after his hometown of Edmonton, and three after his former city of Vancouver), with the simplistic, jangly guitars, old-sounding synths and relaxing, hypnotic instrumentation he’s built his brand with. That’s not to say it’s a bad album: the tracks, while minimalistic-sounding, act as promising skeletons of songs he could’ve fleshed out more. As is, the tracks sound almost like background music — the makings of solid tunes, no doubt, but ones that could’ve been even better with further development.

Cuts like “Portland,” “Edmonton,” “Gualala 2,” “Chicago” and closer “Rockaway” are all great instrumentals with the quintessential Mac DeMarco sound still very much intact. If he’d written lyrics and added vocals to each of these instrumental numbers, the album would’ve been far easier to embrace. Perhaps Five Easy Hot Dogs is simply him whetting fans’ appetites before releasing a proper studio album, but developing these songs further and writing lyrics over them could’ve resulted in a truly captivating body of work. As pleasant and chilled-out as the songs are, Mac still ends up leaving one to wonder what could’ve been.

7/10 Trial Track: “Edmonton”

For more on Mac DeMarco, please visit his website.

This review was originally published in the February 2023 issue of Cult MTL.

---

For our latest in music, please visit the Music section.