Rating: 1/5 stars

Readers expect a music reviewer to listen to the entirety of an album. It is only 30-90 minutes of the reviewers’ time, they say. But sometimes it is the artist’s fault. Musicians, like experimentalist AG Cook (“Apple”) with his seven-volume album “7G,” or indie pop band the Magnetic Fields (“Quickies”) with their nearly three-hour long “69 Love Songs,” push music reviewers’ buttons by obligating them to listen to all of their gigantic releases in the name of fairness. 

“7G” and “69 Love Songs” are surely worth their listens, however, since despite the joke of quantity over quality the artists sure put in enough quality.

“One Wayne G” by Mac DeMarco (“Five Easy Hot Dogs”) is not an example. DeMarco’s project contains 199 tracks, resulting in a nearly nine-hour long runtime. DeMarco does not even title most of the songs. Instead he gives them numeric titles signifying the day he wrote them, beginning with “20180512” and ending five years later with “20230114.” Effectively, they are demos of daily practices in neo-funk production. DeMarco fans are used to him dropping albums of just demos, but this feels more lazy than before.

The mere concept may entice indie listeners toward what seems like a grandiose statement in a maximalist form. Instead we get elevator music; we get not “69 Love Songs” but 199 Mid Whatevers. 

Most of the tracks are instrumentals indulging in the lukewarm “vibey” lo-fi slacker indie landfill that DeMarco and his copycats already saturated the indie scene with. It is yacht rock for millennials. “20191009 I Like Her” is the first proper song on the album, 36 tracks in. DeMarco’s languid voice and shallow lyrics add no climax to an album without any point in existing.

Possibly DeMarco does not want this to be an album. Maybe he wants this to be the indie version of those lo-fi hip-hop “music to study to” videos. The only studying this album can pair with is a case study in how to waste a listener’s time. It is difficult to isolate one track from the rest since the supermajority have the same stale neutrality that hides its unoriginality under “retro” and its dullness under “vibes.” The twangy guitars and ‘70s-ish disco-esque drums are the most uncool funk could ever be. When DeMarco goes the opposite end for simple jangly folk, he still loses any sense of intimacy in favor of AI-generated emotions.

Then there is “20190205 2,” which tries to be creepy but ends up sounding like DeMarco accidentally recorded him dropping his Hydro Flask.

Honestly, this is sad. Alternative music has always had some eclecticism that provides some uniqueness, intrigue and quirk to curious listeners. “One Wayne G” flips this on its head. There is nothing personal about the music on this album. It is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Releases like this are much like Drake (“HER LOSS”) records: bold but with nothing to justify it.

The music industry has reached an apex of little artist compensation on streaming services, touring becoming less manageable and algorithms determining a listener’s music catalog. Is it fair that artist’s like DeMarco can throw their effortless garbage into an album and call it a release? There is nothing wrong with artists releasing what is effectively one long soundtrack for vibing, but the fact that DeMarco can get away with it under the pretense of being a meta-statement is disappointing. 

Mac DeMarco independently released “One Wayne G” on April 21.

Image from Pop Base via Twitter