“Five Easy Hot Dogs” is easy, but not great
Mac DeMarco has returned after four years without an album release with a melancholy, moving instrumental album. “Five Easy Hot Dogs” continues DeMarco’s trend of slower, reflective music, much like his previous two records. The album ebbs and flows through different moods, and while it feels like an authentic effort from one of indie’s most beloved darlings, the album is just good and nothing more.
DeMarco wrote the album on a road trip from Los Angeles to a cabin in Utah, his plan being to “start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record,” according to his album announcement. It’s obvious that each location had a different emotional impact on DeMarco. While most of the songs are similar and carry that distinctive DeMarco sound of sunshine and shade, they all vary enough to carry you to a different place in your life when you hear them.
“Gualala” opens the record with springy guitars whose twang seems to echo days of bygone summers, when the sunset hit the rock cliffs just so and the sand between your toes was starting to dry. Each track feels tinged with melancholy in the way most DeMarco tracks are.
“Crescent City” is slower and features a repeated, almost moaning synth in the background that turns the easily strummed acoustic guitar more somber. The synth grounds the song, making it sound like the soundtrack for loneliness.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the tracks are so similar. If you closed your eyes and ignored the track names, it could feel like the whole record is one big song, simply weaving in and out. If you like Mac DeMarco and his characteristic sound, then this is great — it’s nearly 35 minutes of easy listening instrumental.
If the slow-to-change riffs and stoned quality of DeMarco’s instrumentals irritates you, though, then you won’t get much out of this. “Five Easy Hot Dogs” lacks the relatable, introspective lyrics of DeMarco’s earlier work, from the intensely personal “Watching Him Fade Away” to the beautiful, full-of-love “My Kind of Woman.” The songs on “Five Easy Hot Dogs” are still full of emotion, but their repetitiveness makes them blend together into something more generic. Despite this slightly generic quality, DeMarco seems content with the album in its finished form.
“I was in it while I was in it, and this is what came out of it, just the way it was,” DeMarco wrote in the album announcement.
This “go with the flow” attitude accurately describes the record. It’s not DeMarco’s best work — not by a long shot — but it does feel reflective of a certain moment in time. Every song was recorded and mixed in the city after which it was named, and the album is presented in chronological order of DeMarco’s road trip stops. After a careful listen to each of the songs on the record, DeMarco’s ideology of living in the moment becomes starkly apparent. The bouncy guitars on “Chicago” are funky and fun, an upbeat mood that continues into “Chicago 2,” in which bright, full synths add a warmth that feels like sunshine on a cold day.
Standing in contrast are “Portland” and “Portland 2,” both of which carry a greater weight, and the beeps and clicking percussion on “Portland” sound almost ominous. “Portland 2” echoes this and both tracks feel like something is missing — like DeMarco was searching for something in Portland that he didn’t find.
“Five Easy Hot Dogs” seems to be a palate cleanser for DeMarco. Recording and producing each of the tracks in the cities he visited as a way of capturing a moment in time seems like the perfect challenge for someone looking for something new. Yet, all the tracks include trademarks of DeMarco’s sound — play one second of any of them and anyone will be able to tell you who made it — so it feels like there’s nothing new or fresh about them besides being instrumentals.
If it felt right to DeMarco to focus purely on the music and how it can convey a message, all the more power to him. There’s nothing revolutionary about these tracks, though. There’s no jump in style, no move forward into uncharted territory. It’s simply the ol’ reliable sounds, again and again.
The songs are okay; they’re all solid DeMarco tracks — perfect for a lazy beach day with friends or an afternoon nap under the sleepy California sunshine. Unfortunately, that’s all they are: okay, as a middling effort from an artist who must have needed something different from what he was doing before.
It’ll be interesting to see where DeMarco goes after this album. He’s moved into slower, more introspective work in his last two albums, and “Five Easy Hot Dogs” continues that trend. Will he come up with something new — not necessarily different, but at least engaging — or will he tread the same old worn path, churning out his reliable sounds until we’re sick of them?