By Luke Shanafelt
The 2020s have been a distinct era for Canada’s Mac DeMarco, but Guitar comes in and gives direction to this new era of discography. Guitar was released on Aug. 22, and is DeMarco’s first focused project with words since 2019’s Here comes the Cowboy. This 11 song comeback was produced and finished in a two-week period when DeMarco was in LA. During that time, he had come home from helping his mother find a home and decided it was time to lock in a new project.
“I had like two months before the house stuff was finished,” DeMarco said in a YouTube video posted by Triple J.
Sonically, the album could be considered a minimalist dream. It only features vocals, guitar, bass and drums. DeMarco’s been known to use quite a few effects, and even influenced many indie bands to have a signature bright chorus guitar tone. But, there’s none of that here — just guitar. This provided DeMarco with the opportunity to experiment vocally. When I heard the first single Home, I can’t say I was impressed with the falsetto tone he was going for.
Despite my initial impressions, his album really surprised me. I want to start with DeMarco’s songwriting and lyrics. DeMarco’s main subject matter in his discography has been love for a long time. Starting with Shining, we have that falsetto vocal coming in singing about his want for only one love, but his true feelings are for another. He can’t stop wondering about her, and just wants to see if, “The sun’s still shining down on her.” He’s singing about the emotion you get from an ex just seeing if they’re alright and wanting them to be happy while in another relationship.
Sweeter has a different take on love. This haunting song in my eyes has some very Nirvana Polly type lyrics going on. DeMarco’s singing about a love that’s sweeter being taken away, and how this relationship will be better. He ends the phrase with, “Now back inside your cage.” He’s not talking about an actual girl in these lyrics, he’s talking about the love he wants to protect by keeping it in a cage.
DeMarco’s a pro when it comes to love songs, but sobriety is new for him. When we take a deep dive on the lyrics from Nothing at all. He says “All your cures are being put away.” Having no control after giving up the things that made you feel safe is scary, and I think a lot of this album has to do with being scared. This is evident when you read the song titles such as Nightmare, Punishment, Terror and Phantom for example.
Holy is another song that may have certain implications of dealing with alcoholism and sobriety. DeMarco mentions a curse that is attached to him and I can only think that he is talking about that curse of addiction being in his family for many generations.
To me, Guitar may be one of DeMarco’s most congruent pieces of art to date. The themes are heavy but delivered with that classic charm we get from his music. This is his strongest effort lyrically to date. On the other hand, I am unsatisfied with the repetitiveness. Some may call it meditative, but when you can’t remember which track is which when listening back, I find that to be a result of sonic repetition. If I had to rate this project, I would give it a well deserved 8.7/10.
Luke is a Senior Journalism transfer from Socal who enjoys video editing, music journalism and man on the street interviews.