After a decent chunk of time since releasing his last studio album, Mac DeMarco has officially announced plans for his fifth LP, Five Easy Hot Dogs. It's due to arrive digitally in just a couple weeks (January 20) and on physical formats on May 12 through Royal Mountain Records in Canada and Mac's Record Label everywhere else.
The 14-track instrumental record charts DeMarco's time on the road between January and March 2022, with each song appearing chronologically and named after the city or town — many named for locations north of the border — in which it was written.
"The plan was to start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record," DeMarco explained of the two-month trek in a statement. "Kind of like being on tour, except there weren't any shows, and I'd just be burning money."
He continued:
Some places I stayed longer in than others, some of them I knew from the past, others not so much. I tried to keep things busy all the time. If I didn't know what was up in a city, I'd just walk around 'til someone recognized me and go from there. I met a lot of interesting people this way, and had a bunch of cool experiences.
The nature of ripping around and recording and travelling in this manner doesn't lend well to sitting around and planning or thinking about what it was that I was setting out to do. I didn't ever have a sound in mind, or a theme or anything, I would just start recording. Luckily the collection of recordings from this period all shake hands, they have a present musical identity as a whole. I was in it while I was in it, and this is what came out of it, just the way it was.
He further describes the follow-up to 2019's Here Comes the Cowboy as "what rolling around like that feels like." So far, there's no single to preview the record, so you'll just have to settle with peeping the tracklisting and cover art below for now.
Five Easy Hot Dogs:
1. Gualala
2. Gualala 2
3. Crescent City
4. Portland
5. Portland 2
6. Victoria
7. Vancouver
8. Vancouver 2
9. Vancouver 3
10. Edmonton
11. Edmonton 2
12. Chicago 1
13. Chicago 2
14. Rockaway
The 14-track instrumental record charts DeMarco's time on the road between January and March 2022, with each song appearing chronologically and named after the city or town — many named for locations north of the border — in which it was written.
"The plan was to start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record," DeMarco explained of the two-month trek in a statement. "Kind of like being on tour, except there weren't any shows, and I'd just be burning money."
He continued:
Some places I stayed longer in than others, some of them I knew from the past, others not so much. I tried to keep things busy all the time. If I didn't know what was up in a city, I'd just walk around 'til someone recognized me and go from there. I met a lot of interesting people this way, and had a bunch of cool experiences.
The nature of ripping around and recording and travelling in this manner doesn't lend well to sitting around and planning or thinking about what it was that I was setting out to do. I didn't ever have a sound in mind, or a theme or anything, I would just start recording. Luckily the collection of recordings from this period all shake hands, they have a present musical identity as a whole. I was in it while I was in it, and this is what came out of it, just the way it was.
He further describes the follow-up to 2019's Here Comes the Cowboy as "what rolling around like that feels like." So far, there's no single to preview the record, so you'll just have to settle with peeping the tracklisting and cover art below for now.
Five Easy Hot Dogs:
1. Gualala
2. Gualala 2
3. Crescent City
4. Portland
5. Portland 2
6. Victoria
7. Vancouver
8. Vancouver 2
9. Vancouver 3
10. Edmonton
11. Edmonton 2
12. Chicago 1
13. Chicago 2
14. Rockaway
