Canadian indie rock juggernaut Mac DeMarco has released his sixth studio album, Guitar, via his label, aptly titled Mac’s Record Label.
Mac DeMarco’s new album Guitar, written, produced, recorded, and mixed by Mac himself in a 2-week span, can be a bit difficult to discern on first listen as a cohesive body of work without at least a surface-level understanding of the man behind the music: McBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco. Who is he? Where’s he from? What’s he all about? Such an inquisition will lead to the discovery of a man who would sooner release a 199-song, 8-hour compilation album of mostly instrumental demos before bending to the expectations of those who have come to look to him for glitzy yet moody indie pop guitar ballads sprinkled with glittering synths and a pristine mix to boot. Guitar rips all of the shine away, becoming something closer to a condensed One Wayne G with vocals rather than anything close to “Chamber of Reflection.”
Guitar is Mac DeMarco in his rawest, purest form, trading the eccentricities of polished mixes and soaring synths for a Dylan-esque backdrop that usually includes no more than strummed guitar chords and a bass line, spotlighting the intimacy and vulnerability in his performances. In an interview with The New Yorker, Mac stated that, after outsourcing an engineer to mix the songs, he opted to instead mix them himself, feeling that the professional mix sounded too polished and he prefers something closer to a demo. “It’s not about something getting better or worse. It’s just about it being me,” he says.
Somewhere in that quote lies the secret to this seemingly random collection of guitar songs. Rather than functioning as a single, unified painting, the project is more akin to a collection of snapshots; stills strung together to provide a brief, unfiltered glimpse into the mind of the man The New Yorker dubs The Last Indie Rock Star.
“My love must be broken. What’s been going on?” Mac sings in a raspy, cracked, and airy falsetto vocal to kick off the album’s opening song, “Shining,” a perfect representation of what listeners can expect from the remainder of the project. In “Shining” DeMarco laments his dysfunctional love to a lover, expressing a desire to love her, and her alone, but being ultimately unable to do so as his heart “…seems to have an MO of it’s own,” forever pulling him towards some tertiary party; be it another person, another place, or another thing. “Is the sun still shining down on her?” he ponders over minimal production, which includes no more than a sharp snare and subdued kick to keep time, laced between bright guitar chords and a subtle bass groove, giving Mac’s vocals plenty of space to be perfectly imperfect.
As if in response to his inability to control his own heart, the very next song, “Sweeter,” sees DeMarco seemingly apologetic, promising to be better and hoping he and his lover can forget about past transgressions, continuing as if nothing happened at all. Backed by an instrumental palette that sounds almost identical to “Shining” (if not a bit more down-trodden), “Sweeter” introduces a common theme in the album’s narrative; that being an inability for Mac to cope with the past in any capacity, an inability that manifests itself in various ways throughout the project; from being unable to return to a place that has “…memories attached that [he’d] sooner let go [of]” in “Home” to being haunted when alone by the apparition of a past lover in “Phantom.” DeMarco would rather trap himself in this cycle of transgression, followed by pain, followed by a desire to move on and forget, rather than self-reflect and make amends. Seemingly acknowledging this cycle, though, in the last line of “Sweeter,” Mac says: “I can be much sweeter. Now, back inside your cage.”
Mac’s complicated relationship with the past doesn’t seem to be a new development, however. Until relatively recently, DeMarco was a serial drinker and cigarette smoker, giving up the former in 2020 and the latter in 2022. In an interview with The New Yorker, he questioned if he’d even still be alive had he not stopped, stating that the addiction was quite severe. Of giving up smoking, Mac says that it was “…the worst thing ever,” experiencing withdrawal symptoms that included irrational anger, profuse sweating, intense dizziness, and an inability to sleep. Now unable to escape his feelings by indulging in such vices, Mac seems to realize the futility of running from the past at all, outlined in songs like “Terror,” where he says, “Now my head's back on I see it/All those days of trying to run/What a waste of breath.” Laden over slow, thumping drums that feel in time with a zombie walking, as well as some folky strummed guitar notes, the self-loathing reaches a fever pitch here, with Mac seeming to come to terms with the fact that he’s “just a terror wandering,” describing himself as feeling like a leech, arriving only in time to suck the life out of whoever it is that he’s with.
“Punishment” is a real standout on the project. In just two minutes, Mac manages to capture the essence of confusion and frustration in the face of overwhelming adversity, questioning everything you’re taught as a kid when it doesn’t prepare you for the hardships of life, all while staying true to the album’s style and formula. “…Mama / I was told that punishment will come to / Those of us who don’t do what we’re made to / But how on earth is anyone to know? / If the lane you travel is your own?” Mac says over a strummed folky guitar in a chorus that gives the feeling of a traveler on a lone voyage, traversing a path unexplored by anyone previously.
Overall, Mac DeMarco’s Guitar is a gut-wrenching and naked display of humanity, with all of its blemishes and imperfections. It’s a scrapbook of painful memories and regrettable decisions paralleled with their divine consequences, all culminating in a plea to a higher power as Mac prays to be saved by some miraculous act of divine intervention on the album’s penultimate track, “Holy.” The album ends with a gentle fade to black on “Rooster,” the closing track, where Mac declares that despite everything that came previously, “[he’ll] still rise up with the rooster,” and while the simplistic, uniform production and demo quality occasionally does, at times, leave more to be desired from songs like “Nightmare,” Rock And Roll,” “Nothing At All,” and just in general, the vulnerability, depth of emotion, and guttural rawness are quite admirable from an artistic standpoint, providing a vivid, unfettered image of the enigmatic Mac DeMarco.
