On Jan. 20, artist Mac DeMarco released Five Easy Hot Dogs, an instrumental album composed of 14 tracks totaling nearly 35 minutes.

Of the 14 tracks, I enjoyed seven of them and only truly disliked two of them. My personal favorites were “Gualala”, “Vancouver”, “Vancouver 3”, and “Chicago”.

DeMarco’s album is entirely instrumental, and though this obviously differs from his usual style, considering there are no lyrics, there are still some similarities to his previous work.

Five Easy Hot Dogs reminded me a lot of the song “Nobody” from his 2019 album Here Comes The Cowboy. Each track on Five Easy Hot Dogs has a similar feeling to “Nobody”, which definitely sports DeMarco’s slow candace and spidery guitar sound he is so well known and loved for.

DeMarco opens the album well with “Gualala”, which is bubbly and upbeat but still somehow relaxing. A lot of the songs are obviously very repetitive because they are fully instrumental, which can be repetitive in nature. But I didn’t mind the repetitiveness of “Gualala” in particular – it’s relaxing, definitely something I’d listen to while studying or winding down after a long day.

“Vancouver” is also very upbeat and is easily one of my favorite tracks on the album. Despite the similar sounds of many of the tracks, I personally found Vancouver to stand out against the others. It was less repetitive; even though the background instrumentals looped, the main guitar changed a couple of times, adding dimension.

Another track that stood out was “Chicago”. While the others were relaxing, “Chicago” was, in a way, jazzy. The main melody switched up, which made it interesting and less predictable to the listener.

“Vancouver 3” was another of my favorites. It sported almost water-like instrumentals that reminded me of being in nature, maybe by a river or in a forest. This track definitely flowed and was more whimsical than the rest of the album, dancing from section to section of the song.

The album came about from a spontaneous road trip where DeMarco set out to drive across North America and come home with a recorded album. Each song was written in the corresponding cities in their titles.

While some songs such as “Victoria” and “Portland” express a storyline that portrays the feeling of travel with no destination, others sound much more stagnant, such as “Crescent City” and “Portland 2”.

I wasn’t impressed with “Portland 2” and “Edmonton 2” in particular.

DeMarco didn’t have a set theme going into the album, but he said, “Luckily the collection of recordings from this period all shake hands, they have a present musical identity as a whole.”

The musical identity as a whole is definitely wrapped up in the final song: “Rockaway”. It includes all the feelings and instruments of the other 13 tracks, tying them all together cleanly.

As much as I adore DeMarco and truly don’t think he could put a bad album out into the world if he tried, I wasn’t blown away by Five Easy Hot Dogs. Instrumental is not typically something you blast in your car on a late-night drive or put on your everyday playlist, so I wasn’t expecting any of that from this release, but many of the tracks still fell short and the songs began to blend together.

DeMarco has such a unique sound, and though that definitely was present in the album, Five Easy Hot Dogs didn’t showcase his best talent by any means.

I would rate the album 3/5 stars overall.