New music from Mac Demarco is always welcome because it always feels like a warm, fuzzy hug. As of today, we have some excellent news from the man himself — a new instrumental record titled Five Easy Hot Dogs is done and set for its official release on January 20. Five months later, on May 12, the record will be released on vinyl.

“The plan was to start driving north, and not go home to Los Angeles until I was done with a record,” DeMarco said about the upcoming record, the components of which were recorded while he was on the road. “Kind of like being on tour, except there weren’t any shows, and I’d just be burning money.”

 

Each song on the album was put together in the city it is named after and arranged in chronological order in accordance to Demarco’s roadmap: “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.”

After playing in the Bay Area early last year, the Canadian slack rocker had an open-ended plan of crashing in motels or people’s homes, and recording his new album in his temporary setups. If things didn’t go as planned, he would continue driving.

“I had my guitars with me, a bass, a weird little drum kit with a kick drum we sawed in half in Golden Gate Park, all the stands and cabling I’d need, a couple of mics, an old model D, and a TX7,” DeMarco said. “I wound up picking a bunch of stuff as I went as well, trying to keep it as travel friendly as possible though.”

He set out on his journey in California and drove around North America before booking a cabin in Utah, where he stayed for a night.

“It probably could have slept about 20 people, but instead it was just me withdrawing from nicotine with a bunch of taxidermy animals all over the place. No other humans for probably 50 miles in any direction. Horrible idea. I lasted one night and went back to Los Angeles the next day,” he recalled. “When I first got back home, I felt as though I had given up on my idea and failed to finish what I was trying to do. But that’s all dog shit.

“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. 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 concluded on a hopeful note: “This record sounds like what rolling around like that feels like. I hope you enjoy.”

Five Easy Hot Dogs tracklist:
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
13. Chicago 2
14. Rockaway