Demarco’s album leaves listeners half full

Mac Demarco is a 32-year-old man from Duncan, Canada. Most might know his songs that blew up on TikTok such as “Heart to Heart,” “Freaking Out the Neighborhood”, and “My Kind of Woman.” He has been producing music since 2009 when he released his first mixtape named “A New Record”, but his name really got out there to mainstream media with TikTok. TikTok truly pushed his music so much farther than before, if you were to hum one of his songs, I guarantee someone would recognize it. 

 The most important part to me that everyone should remember is that he didn’t let TikTok influence his music even though it appeared on the app. Everything he creates feels true to him and original.  

On January 20, of this year, he released a new 14-song long album named “Five Easy Hot Dogs”. In the making of this album, he went on a road trip with the idea that he wouldn’t be returning until he had an album. Each track is named after the city it was created in. The cover of the album shows what seems to have been a small landslide. I love this cover because I think it shows the not so beautiful sides of the world and the realness of Mac Demarco’s music. Whether he had that thought process or not for the cover, I still think it was an excellent choice. 

 When hearing many other songs of his, this album is a little surprising at first. He usually is not one to have a lot of instrumentals in an album but the whole album is instrumentals. I was put off at first not hearing any words but as I got deeper into the album, I started to like it more and more. Many of the songs remind me of something you would hear in a video game like Animal Crossing. It’s a laid-back album that you can relax to. 

Although I enjoyed this album, the music is a little repetitive, and I think some songs are longer than they should be. Songs I think could benefit from being cut down are “Portland” and “Vancouver 2”. Extending some of the songs takes away from the freshness of it and the impact that the song has. I loved the use of the different instruments in the songs. From what I heard tracks like “Gualala 2”, “Victoria”, and “Vancouver”, there seems to be many different percussion instruments used. I heard claves, bongos, some type of shaker, possibly a wood block, and more. It’s nice to hear some variety from the consistent stream of pop music that has no sort of musical depth to it. Whether you like this album or not is fully up to how extensive your music taste is.  

Overall, this album is definitely not a flop. I give it a 3/5. My favorite songs from this album had to be “Gualala 2”, “Portland 2”, and “Edmonton”. The only flaws it truly has is the repetitiveness of it which easily can bore you. If anything, it is perfect background music for a study session or reading a book. As for the musicality of it, the combination of different instruments and sounds were beautiful, charming, and really made for an enjoyable addition to the music world. This album is one that deserves at least one listen from everyone.