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There’s only one Wayne Gretzky
Mac Demarco’s collection of ‘throwaway sounds’ is possibly the album to end his career
‘One Wayne G,’ released April 21, is a compilation of almost 200 songs, spanning eight hours and 43 minutes, ranging from projects he began in 2018 to tracks he finished four months ago.
May 30, 2023
Mac DeMarco’s newest project ‘One Wayne G,’ named after the great Wayne Gretzky, is organized by year, month then day, with additional numbers after the date if there was more than one song made that day.
It’s not an album as much as a hard drive purge, a 199-track data dump with a calming vibe that’s pleasant, but also easy to ignore.
‘One Wayne G’ features numerous instrumental pieces, with only 18 of the 199 songs having lyrics. As albums go, this is a pretty tough listen, being that it was literally over eight hours long, but it speaks to who Mac DeMarco is and who his fanbase is. They’re the type of people to listen to such an album (to which I am no exception), and find the small gems in the giant pile of throwaways.
That being said, with a couple of good tracks I took away from this album, there are some parts that sounded like things that could’ve been thrown together on a loop in 30 seconds in a beat maker. This is the problem I found with the album, that all the songs seem like a repeat of the same sound for two odd minutes.
With songs like ‘20190724,’ we have the song Mac teased, a hyperactive funky new track in an interview with PBS NewsHour, playing a brief snippet and joking that it was “just garbage, but fun to make.” But it’s true, it’s garbage, it’s repetitive, it’s loud and just a combination of different noises from Garageband.
Unfortunately, that’s how most of the instrumental tracks felt. ‘20200229 2’ was 13 minutes of despair-filled tones, ‘20191229’ was something I felt that sounded like Yves Tumor and ‘20191215’ sounded like Mac had just been tapping his guitar, playing a couple of chords and recording it.
However, the album was still solid at times, with songs like ‘20191009 I Like Her,’ ‘20200820 Turn My Tv On’ and ‘20200817 Proud True Toyota.’ Of all 199 songs on ‘One Wayne G’, ‘Proud True Toyota’ is the one that sounds the most like a classic DeMarco song.
Overall, this album was just ok. It was most definitely something that was thrown together, and just Mac DeMarco submitting a folder of some 200 beats, but they’re not all that bad. However, with word going around that Mac is retiring, this would be a pretty sad send off, and not one any fan of his would want to see.
