Mac DeMarco Announces New Instrumental Album ‘Five Easy Hot Dogs’

January 5, 2023

Mac DeMarco has announced a new instrumental album, recorded on an extensive road trip the Canadian musician took throughout 2022. Titled Five Easy Hot Dogs, it’s set to arrive on Friday, 20th January on digital and CD, with vinyl copies coming in May. Pre-order a copy here.

The trip began in January 2022 in California. The album’s 14 song titles reflect where each song was recorded – beginning in Gualala, California, and venturing to Crescent City, Portland, Vancouver, Edmonton and Chicago, before ending in Rockaway, New York.

Five Easy Hot Dogs is Mac DeMarco’s first instrumental album

In a press release, DeMarco elaborated on the process of recording Five Easy Hot Dogs. “Some places I stayed longer in than others, some of them I knew from the past, others not so much,” he said. “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.”

DeMarco enjoyed the proactive and non-ruminative aspect of recording an album amid an epic roadtrip. “The nature of ripping around and recording and traveling 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,” he said. “I didn’t ever have a sound in mind, or a theme or anything, I would just start recording.”

“Luckily,” he continued, “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. This record sounds like what rolling around like that feels like. I hope you enjoy.”

Five Easy Hot Dogs will be DeMarco’s first new album since 2019’s Here Comes the Cowboy. Since then, he’s made a handful of guest appearances, such as, in 2020, starring in the music video for Crowded House‘s Dreamers Are Waiting cut ‘Whatever You Want’.

The following year, he recorded a cover of ‘Enter Sandman’ for The Metallica Blacklist tribute album, and featured on songs by Benny Sings and Myd. In 2022, he appeared on DOMi and JD Beck’s collaborative album NOT TiGHT – appearing on the song ‘TWO SHRiMPS’ – and last month shared a rendition of holiday standard ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’.