Mac DeMarco: Guitar
A humble, heartfelt record that trades irony for sincerity, and finds DeMarco at his most unguarded
Mac DeMarco has always carried the air of a slacker poet—half-jester, half-confessor—whose rough edges were as much a part of his appeal as his music itself. But with Guitar, his sixth album and first full-length return to songwriting since Here Comes the Cowboy, he sounds like someone who has finally stepped out of the haze and into a more grounded, if still fragile, kind of clarity.
Over the past few years, DeMarco has quietly weathered some of the biggest shifts of his life: the death of his father, the move from LA chaos to a more subdued existence in British Columbia, and the decision to give up drinking and smoking. That maturity shapes Guitar, an album stripped of frills and studio trickery. Recorded in just two weeks at home, it leans on the essentials—electric and acoustic guitars, simple bass and drum lines, and his instantly recognisable, weary-sounding voice.
The record is at its most powerful when DeMarco turns inward. On “Nightmare,” perhaps the standout track, he sounds both confessional and tentative, as though addressing someone who might not be awake to hear him. It’s a reminder of his ability to capture emotional vulnerability in deceptively simple phrasing. Elsewhere, songs like “Knockin’” and “Home” explore memory and regret—old failures resurfacing, unwanted reminders of past selves he’s still trying to outgrow.
But Guitar isn’t just an album of ghosts. Tracks like “Sweeter” and “Punishment” reach tentatively toward the future, offering quiet pleas for patience, change, and redemption. Even when DeMarco doubts himself, there’s a thread of optimism woven into the melancholy—a sense that he hasn’t given up on becoming a better version of himself.
What makes this record so compelling isn’t technical brilliance or reinvention, but its raw honesty. DeMarco has pared back his sound to match the stripped-down honesty of the lyrics. There are no disguises here, no goofy personas to soften the blow. Just a man reckoning with the weight of his past while cautiously eyeing the possibility of something lighter ahead.
Guitar may not dazzle with experimentation, but it lingers because it feels lived-in, human, and deeply relatable. It’s the sound of DeMarco finally moving past the caricature of the goofy ballcap-wearing slacker and settling into something more enduring: an artist growing older, admitting flaws, and still trying to write his way into a better tomorrow.
