Ever since the woozy, lo-fi indie rock of his mini-album debut Rock and Roll Night Club put him on the map, Mac DeMarco has consistently had a knack for balancing the light with the heavy. Underneath his buoyant, transgressive sense of humor and affable, goofball nature lies a soulful observer who finds the sublime and melancholy in the mundane, whether it’s in a love song about his favorite brand of cigarettes, a pensive existential wrestle with time, or a strikingly honest musing about turning into his father.
But naturally, over time, DeMarco has grown up a bit, dialing down his sillier impulses and leaning harder into the meditative, nomadic side of his personality. In doing so, the appeal of his easygoing Canadian charm has waned, and his subsequent records have suffered a bit from aimlessness. Take, for instance, 2019’s tedious Here Comes the Cowboy or 2023’s instrumental-only Five Easy Hot Dogs or the 9-hour hard-drive dump One Wayne G, the latter of which felt less like a gargantuan treasure trove of unreleased demos and more like a bloated, intermittently compelling compilation of outtakes.
It’s hard to discern the exact root of this gradual downgrade in the variety of DeMarco’s work, but it could stem from a combination of things: aging, a minimized pressure to prove himself, or an admirable attempt to find peace in sobriety. Whatever the case, a longtime fan such as myself half-hopes DeMarco still has some of that original spark in him, even if the culture has sort of moved past the slacker-hipster aesthetic that defined his initial image and sound a decade ago.
DeMarco’s sixth and latest LP, Guitar, offers fragments of that spark, but not quite enough to fully reignite the possibility that he still has something new or interesting to say. The album’s austere production and lean scope are certainly a welcome relief from the meandering spirit that animated DeMarco’s more recent outputs. But even though he’s shown an acuity in taking a homespun idea and transforming it into slice-of-life poetry, Guitar plays things a bit too safe. It’s a modest, earnest, downtempo, acoustic-heavy record and doesn’t seem to mind being as simple and unadorned as its title.
The unhurried, unassuming execution makes Guitar somewhat of a homogenous and inoffensive listen, but, at the very least, it’s nice to hear DeMarco’s voice again after Five Easy Hot Dogs. His quivering coos are wearier, higher, and more strained than ever, couching the album’s monotony in a cozy atmosphere. And although Guitar doesn’t contain any big flourishes or grand statements, DeMarco does make a few tasteful choices that tactfully disrupt the uber-pleasant cadence: the deep-throated recitation of the title on “Holy,” the escalating la-la-la’s on “Rooster,” and the twangy guitar solo on “Rock and Roll” that vaguely recalls the bluesy breakdowns from 2 and Salad Days. There are also a few offerings, like the lead single “Home,” that disarm the listener in unexpected ways, albeit a bit too briefly. On its own, the song doesn’t elicit much of a reaction, but as the album’s midpoint, it ties together Guitar’s overarching theme of loneliness with a poignant reflection on the cost of letting friendships and relationships dissolve over time.
Nevertheless, the album’s subtle sonic ornaments and fleeting instances of lyrical ingenuity are ultimately too transient to leave a lasting impression, as DeMarco mostly keeps everything at a somber, inert simmer rather than building on his current anxieties (consider, for instance, the thematic and titular interchangeability of the consecutive three-track run “Phantom,” “Nightmare,” and “Terror”). It’s all just a bit too gentle and understated, intimate not in the sense that it feels like listening to an artist bare his soul, but like a songman strumming some plain melodies to the first words that come to mind.
Hearing the album through that lens, it’s sort of sweet, even sometimes hypnotic in its lulling tenderness and raw, ambient sadness—like being slowly cradled to sleep by the sound of the TV late at night. But in the larger context of Mac DeMarco’s discography, Guitar doesn’t amount to much more than what feels like one continuous jam session spliced into vignettes, with most of its songs blurring together into an indistinguishable clump and evaporating as soon as they’re over.
In a press release leading up to the album, DeMarco stated that Guitar is “as close to a true representation of where I’m at in my life today as I can manage to put to paper.” He also mentioned he had scrapped an entirely different album right before making Guitar called Hear the Music. Given these revelations, it seems that DeMarco is still a bit unmoored, but perhaps is now less concerned about it. You’d expect that kind of unbothered contentment and ability to start over when something isn’t working to elicit a piece of music you can sink your teeth into, but Guitar being the eventual result of that malleable process leaves much to be desired.
Sam Rosenberg is a filmmaker and freelance entertainment writer from Los Angeles with bylines in The Daily Beast, Consequence, AltPress and Metacritic. You can find him on Twitter @samiamrosenberg.
