Mac DeMarco ‘Guitar’ Review: The Fog of Despair

Over the last few years, the loose, barebones style that made Mac DeMarco’s music so inviting has calcified into a kind of languor. Once a source of intimacy, especially on 2017’s confessional This Old Dog, this approach is starting to feel like creative stagnation. The Canadian singer-songwriter’s sixth studio album, Guitar, boasts similarly skeletal arrangements and lo-fi textures of albums like 2019’s Here Comes the Cowboy, but it also marks a tentative return to the more introspective songwriting that made This Old Dog so compelling.

The 12 songs on Guitar are mournful reflections on aging, regret, and emotional drift, shaded by the ache of lost love. But while understated drum machines, chorused guitars, and soft synths create a sense of intimacy, the sparseness quickly wears thin. Too many of these songs feel underdeveloped, save for a couple of tracks that push against the album’s inertia.

Opener “Shining” immediately kicks things off with DeMarco reaching for a high falsetto note. The melody sparkles, but it’s shadowed by nostalgia and heartbreak: “All I wanted to be’s gone away now,” DeMarco sings with a breezy wistfulness that recalls his early work. The very next song, “Sweeter,” leans further into melancholy, its gentle guitar strums and hopeful refrain (“This time will be sweeter”) undercut by resignation (“Some things never change”) as the singer retreats into the “cage” he’d only just escaped.

Guitar eventually gets bogged down as DeMarco becomes increasingly dour and songs like “Phantom” and “Nightmare” begin to blur together in a haze of desolation. There are moments that pierce the heaviness, if only briefly, but they’re exceptions rather than the rule.

Following the bleak “Terror,” DeMarco offers a rare catharsis with “Rock and Roll,” a track where the sonic minimalism actually feels expansive rather than hollow. The song’s tension builds until he starts noodling away near the end, suggesting some kind of revelation: “I’m down here screaming/Overjoyed/But still can’t help feeling down,” he admits, his voice barely rising above a whisper but still packing an emotional wallop.

Despite its open-heartedness, Guitar ultimately falls back into the patterns that have defined DeMarco’s post-Dog output. “Nothing at All,” “Knockin,” and “Holy” gesture at emotional heft but lack urgency or musical variation. For all their vulnerability, these songs are too inert to make a lasting impression. The flashes of resonance are undeniable, but they’re not enough to break the overwhelming fog of despair that settles over the album.