When I opened up Spotify on the cold morning of Jan. 21, a new album from Mac Demarco was not something I expected to see.

As an avid fan, I was disappointed in myself. My favorite artist released a new album, and I had no prior knowledge of it.

So, with much excitement, I started listening to “Five Easy Hot Dogs,” only to realized it was all instrumental.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Demarco’s instrumentals. I think his songs are so clearly identifiable because of the instrumental arrangements and the production he uses.

The instrumentals on this release definitely stayed true to his usual sound and actually felt like a slight mix of the instrumentals on his 2017 album “This Old Dog” and his 2019 album “Here Comes The Cowboy.”

Unfortunately, this made it lack individuality. He could’ve added something to these new songs, maybe an instrument he doesn’t use in his music often, in an effort to make them different from his other work.

Although the smooth string instruments and relaxing beat were pleasant to listen to, I still felt a little dissatisfied with this album. To me, his lyrics and his instrumental productions go hand in hand: there needs to be both, not one or the other.

Because of the lack of vocals, there was no particular song in this album that stood out to me. They all just kind of blended together, and I couldn’t even name the songs of the top of my head if I tried.

On one hand, this shows that the album is cohesive and all the songs sound like they belong together.

On the other hand, I could never imagine just listening to one specific song because none were memorable enough. I would only ever listen to these songs if I was listening to the album as a whole.

Maybe if he had recently released an album with vocals, I wouldn’t be too upset to not have them. Since the last time he released a vocal album was “Here Comes The Cowboy,” I guess you could say I wanted more.

Even with all my negative opinions about this release, I’ll probably still be listening to it while I write next week’s Tiger Times piece.