Since 2019’s mildly received (and mildly controversial) Here Comes the Cowboy, Mac DeMarco hasn’t quite shied away from music. He released Five Easy Hot Dogs, an instrumental album inspired by a cross-country road trip, in 2023, the same year he dumped a mind-numbing nine hours ‘worth of material onto One Wayne G. He may not have exactly released songs about quitting alcohol and smoking, but it was his way of staying sane while doing, as he puts it on the new song ‘Punishment’, what he’s made to do. But it was about time for DeMarco to release a record like Guitar, an unironically guitar-based and ostensibly straightforward collection of songs that he recorded alone at his home studio in Los Angeles in about two weeks. As breezy and easygoing as it sounds, DeMarco has cultivated his gift for fraying and flexing the edges of his cozily bare-bones sound, both lyrically and vocally. He has a way of coming off both emblematically laidback and somehow unmoored, showing you the way around the wandering heart of his music without ever handing you the key.
1. Shining
Though warmly inviting, DeMarco opens Guitar with an admission of a flawed, wandering heart, not revealing exactly what it’s led him to do. He’s wondering “if the sun’s still shining down on her,” implying his curiosity has left another behind. “All I wanted to be’s gone away now,” he sings, “Gone away now from me.” The smoothness of his falsetto is convincing and humanly imperfect, the tempo naturally languid, drawing out his little escape.
2. Sweeter
The second track is aspirational, with the narrator repeatedly promising it’ll be sweeter this time. Yet DeMarco slyly undercuts the tenderness, switching to a more somber chord as he follows it up with, “Some things never change,” and then, even more unnervingly, “Now, back inside your cage.” He’s addressing himself, of course, with the same line of thinking as the opener, even as DeMarco is quicker to acknowledge it’s “your heart” that’s being broken. Is the pain, on both sides, enough for the singer to change what seems to be innate? His resignation, however obvious, will go away too, though there’s no telling what else he’ll be left with.
3. Phantom
For a song about the lingering echo of a lost love, ‘Phantom’ is cannily the shortest song on the album. “Surely, I was wrong/ Casting spells and singing silly songs,” he sings, as if momentarily underwhelmed by their magic. He’ll get back to it, sure, but in the grip of that feeling, they’re frustratingly weightless. The listener’s left wanting more, too.
4. Nightmare
DeMarco quit smoking about three years ago, and ‘Nightmare’ revisits his old addiction in a cloud of regret. “Had you known that further down that road/ There’d be crying/ Maybe you’d have lessened up your load,” he sings. The chorus is one of the record’s most memorably enchanting.
5. Terror
DeMarco expounds on the nature of his wandering heart, attracted not to some romantic ideal but even the most punishing aspects of the lifestyle he’s chosen, which happens to be the title of the next song: ‘Rock and Roll’. With some noodly guitar chasing the main melody around, he allows himself a bit more vulnerability: what really terrifies him, of course, is death. “All those days of trying to run,” he sings, tying the thread back to the first song, “What a waste of breath.” Guitar often sounds like he’s trying to catch it.
6. Rock and Roll
Stirring echoes of his debut mini-record, Rock and Roll Night Club, the song also captures Guitar‘s strange ambivalence: “Overjoyed/But still can’t help feeling down.” In a similar way, he still pledges his allegiance to the thing he sold his soul for, but it’s got the surreal bent of the past. He languishes in it with a woozy guitar solo, ultimately disassembling it the way a horror score would. The terror and the thrill of it, hand in hand.
7. Home
‘Home’ is less of an interrogation of what the concept means to DeMarco now than what we keep with us once a place ceases feeling like one. In many ways, Guitar is centered around home – that’s where it was recorded, and it sounds homed-in even in its discomforts. Here, though, he is unsettled and alienated by those old streets that have names and faces and memories attached “that I’d sooner let go.” You wonder if the one he’s singing it from will also wear out.
8. Nothing at All
‘Nothing at All’ gets under the skin of pleasant domesticity, exposing how volatile it can be: “It’s always been/ All or nothing at all/ With you baby.” You wish more songs on Guitar dug deeper into these emotional dynamics, which feel like hushed confessions in a thin-walled room. The main riff once again twirls its finger around DeMarco’s voice, unsure whether to agree or protest, and rendering the difference fittingly imperceptible.
9. Punishment
Critics will naturally single out the lines, “I was told that punishment will come to/ Those of us who don’t do what we’re made to,” but it’s worth noting DeMarco sings them in a cadence that suggests he’s not taking himself too seriously. A couple of lyrics later are much more true to his playful spirit: “Take all my blood out and bottle it up/ If you’d like to try a sip, I’ll grab you a cup.” If his music leaves you with as much as a smirk, it suggests, he’ll have followed through. But he still won’t be free from pain, which is why he keeps scratching harder at the wounds.
10. Knockin
The characters on Guitar have their minds and their love all bent, and here the singer regards “freedom that you earned by bending truth.” He wonders what to do with it, but sounds in no rush to answer the door. It’s there, standing by, that old memories, unsent letters, and unanswered questions come rushing in. When you’re feeling low, you don’t know what to do with them, either, but a song can fill the empty space.
11. Holy
With a spring in its step and another languid, mesmerizing lead line, ‘Holy’ makes sense as a single – yet it also stands out, with its odd mysticism and DeMarco swooping low for the titular word. Suddenly freedom feels out of reach, and he’s calling out for a miracle. On the other side of the same coin, he sings of a curse that is eternal and inescapable, and that no amount of going away will cleanse.
12. Rooster
DeMarco has always written autobiographical songs, but he ends Guitar with one that’s most directly reflective of his current day-to-day: “I’ll still rise up with the rooster,” he sings, having recently bought up a farmhouse on an island off the coast of British Columbia. There’s no guarantee he’ll keep living this way for the rest of his days, but he seems to have made peace with the idea of the looming end, so haunting earlier on the album. “Things are looking kinda used up,” he admits, but it doesn’t mean they can’t be sweeter – at least, he assures his darling, he doesn’t bite like he used to. Guitar may sound tame in comparison to some of DeMarco’s earlier, more influential releases, but if you’re a fan, you probably won’t mind. Hopefully you’ve grown up with him.
