Marika Hackman Keeps Her Horizon Close

What I love about Marika Hackman’s new album, Big Sigh, is that it’s the first real major indie release of 2024 that’s so obviously an artist’s best work yet. I love I’m Not Your Man dearly, but what Hackman achieves on Big Sigh is unparalleled in her career thus far, which has spanned a decade, four LPs and a bevy of EPs and covers. The Hampshire-born musician went nearly five years without dropping a new record of brand new material, but Big Sigh was more than worth the wait. Built off of the momentum of singles “No Caffeine,” “Hanging,” “Slime” and “The Yellow Mile,” it was clearly damn near immediately that this new phase of Hackman’s career was going to be momentous.

Hackman is the type of songwriter you couldn’t dream up if you tried. Her way of making you squirm with language that is so potent it’ll split you in two is writing unlike that of anyone else in her orbit. “Take me in, open up and spread me thin, feel around the brain in my legs,” she sings on “Slime”; “And my heart won’t grow with your fingers down my throat,” the chorus on “Hanging” goes. Knowing Hackman’s poetic familial roots makes sense when you flip on one of her records; the way she can build a verse is unequivocally deft and singular.

Big Sigh makes a big swing at a new sonic chapter, as Marika Hackman has traded in the big, bruised and boastful guitar-focused anthems of 2019’s Any Human Friend for much more solemn, sublime, piano-centric compositions packed with string arrangements and then sprawled out with atmospheric horizons. Last month, I sat down over Zoom with Hackman to talk about Big Sigh, pulling parts of her catalog into her new material and finally going on all in on honesty in her lyricism without losing the biting candidness she’s built a career out of.

This conversation has been edited for clarity.

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Paste: In between Any Human Friend and Big Sigh, we got the covers record from you in 2020. What did that project mean for you at the time, when you put it together? Does it serve as a bridge at all between the two albums?

Marika Hackman: I think, at the time making it, that was a really good way for me to still be creative and evolve as an artist whilst stuck in the middle of writer’s block. It was a great way of being able to carry on working and keep focus. And I love doing covers, just because it takes that pressure off and you can just really have fun with production. And I think I learned a lot, making that record, that I think translated through. I was playing with certain sounds that I was, then, using on demos for Big Sigh. It definitely is a bridge, even if it’s not, from the writing perspective.

Of course. And you had said that Big Sigh was the hardest record you’ve ever had to make. Can you walk me through why that was?

It took a really long time [to make]. I think my brain just switched off, and I found it really hard to feel inspired, as opposed to just kind of stressed. I had to keep digging and digging and digging, and it just took ages. And then it took a while to record, and it just stretched on for a very long time. So, my relationship with it became quite difficult, because I felt like I didn’t have any perspective on it. And, actually, something that’s been really nice about the fact that it’s coming out now—it’s been finished and mastered for a year—is that I get to talk about it again and I get to hear it again and make videos for it. I feel like I’m seeing it with the perspective that it deserves from its creator, which I just couldn’t give it for such a long time.

From the first bit of writing to the mastering, is this the longest that you’ve spent working on one singular album?

Yes, by a country mile.

Was there a moment where, for any period of time while you were making this record, you started to think it was getting easier?

It’s always easier when you’ve got four songs written. It takes away the blank page issue, which is just daunting. So, once you’ve got a few in the bag and it starts to have its identity, that definitely makes it easier. And, even though it took a while to get to that point, obviously that happened at some point while I was making this. But there wasn’t necessarily a “eureka moment,” there were certain songs I wrote where I restored my faith in my abilities to be able to write a song, rather. There’s a difference, to me, between writing a song and working on a track. And there are moments on this record that are working on a track and there are ones where it was like a song just hit me over the head. It’s the ones where you write the song that really propel me and make me feel like I’m good at my job.

I’d love to hear you tell the story about writing “Hanging” and how that really opened up what this record was going to become for you.

I had just been sitting at home with my guitar—it’s the same process that I’ve done since I was 14, in my bedroom. And I wasn’t trying to be clever, I wasn’t demoing anything. I wasn’t playing around with synths, or instruments that I may be less comfortable with. I was just sitting in my room; it came out really quickly, as I was fucking around with some different tunings and seeing how it sounded. And it just emerged as this track. The lyrics to the first verse and the pre-chorus and chorus, they came super fast on the same day. And, I think I recorded it into my phone. I didn’t even properly demo it, I don’t think I had time. I just recorded it into my phone. And there’s that thing, sometimes you have these moments when you listen back a few hours later—it’s not as good as you thought it was.

I went out to meet some friends at the pub, and I snuck off to the bathroom and put my headphones in and listened to it. And then I was like, “Oh, thank God. It is good. I do love this song, I can do it. This just feels easier now. I know that I’m capable of this, so I will continue to do that.” It was definitely an important moment, in terms of writing the record.

I’m always interested in the deliberations on what tracks get teased and what tracks stay in the vault until the full release. You put “No Caffeine” out before the album was even announced. What was it about that song that made you realize it was the one that needed to kick off this new era of your songwriting and performance?

In my mind, it’s the first “proper” track on the record—because “The Ground” is like a corridor taking you into the world. So, I feel like it’s that perfect opener. I chose it to open the record, so it makes sense that it opens everyone’s perception of what this new phase is going to be for me. The tracks—like most of my records—they’re quite different. “No Caffeine” doesn’t really sound like any of the other tracks on Big Sigh. I also kind of love it when you do that and you put your first single out and everyone’s like, “Ooh, maybe this is what she’s doing.” And then you put out a second single—we put out “Hanging” second—and it’s like, “Oh, no, these are very, very different tones.” It’s just that element of surprise, I suppose. And I love that. It’s cheeky, it’s funny—but it’s actually dealing with quite an intense topic, which definitely is a throughline.

Big Sigh is a very personal record, which is not new territory for you. Do you think that lockdown was a huge catalyst in that inward thinking, or do you imagine that LP4 was likely always going to have this reflective bent to it—a direction you really haven’t gone in before with your writing?

I think it was gonna go that way. I had thought about that and I wanted it to feel different, but I think I was thinking too much about it being different—because of its production or its genre, or whatever. I was so focused on achieving my goal of getting all the songs written that it just came down to the songs. And I think having to dig deeper was really, really good and, also, off the back of the three records that preceded it and the rest. You could say that, tonally, it has a similar feel to my first record [We Slept at Last], but I was not being as candid on my first record. It’s as candid as my third record [Any Human Friend], but then, maybe, the subject matters are more aligned with my second record [I’m Not Your Man]. It’s this amalgamation and, maybe just a little bit more settled and grown up. It’s not looking for its identity; it just is what it is. And I think that was inevitable, at some point.

I was thinking about that, too, because there are definitely moments that you can pull from a lot of different chapters in your catalog. Some artists don’t have much interest in working through the same soundscapes and compositions over and over again. But I think about a project like Tyler, The Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost, for example, where he was pulling different attitudes and sample techniques from every era of his discography to make this big portrait of who he is now as an artist. Combining elements from your first three albums into this one, how does reaching backwards into those parts of your past best encapsulate what exactly this iteration of the Marika Hackman sonic world is supposed to look like in 2024 and moving forward?

You learn a lot with each release and you can pick out what you feel has worked really well—or something that’s just struck a chord with you. I think it’s really nice that that gets pulled forward and not shunned. [Big Sigh] really has got the palette of, to me, the first record. It’s got that somber quality to it, and I’m not trying to stop that on this record. I’m just allowing it to happen, which I very much did on my first album. I think I, slightly, pushed away from that on the next two. And I feel like that expansiveness and those cinematic qualities, they’re all there on that first record, but I think—just lyrically—I was much more private. And I love that this record is still poetic, but it’s also just pretty gnarly. And it’s pretty upfront.

It’s funny, because it’s almost going full-circle. I made [We Slept at Last] 10 years ago, so a lot of time has passed and a lot of stuff has happened. Obviously, there’s other stuff going on in there as well from the other records and EPs, but it’s something that I really love doing. It makes me excited when I think, beyond Big Sigh—and the next record I’m inevitably thinking about making already—and what I’ve learned on this one and where I can take that, there’s now just another book on the shelf that I can look to. It’s not inspiration, it’s almost this safety net. You can go back and look through these things and be like, ‘Oh, yes! That was really cool when I did that thing. Let’s try it. But now that I’m a different person, it’s inevitably going to sound different.”

Coupled with that, what are some moments on Big Sigh that might not be so immediately obvious to the listener but, when you look back and listen to them, you can hear how they’re marks of you taking risks or even recognizing your own progression as a performer and a songwriter a decade and four LPs in at this point?

A big one for me is the string arrangements. I’ve never really backed myself to actually properly write a string arrangement. I would write notes before going to the studio, like “Oh, we should have some strings here” or I would write some string parts when I’d get into the studio and be like “Oh, ignore those, they’re too cheesy.” And this time, I was like, “No, I like these parts.” I can’t write them onto music paper, I can’t notate them—but I want these parts to be the string parts. And that really feels like a grown-up making music to me. I love it, because it’s got a foot in the classical world and that, inevitably, feels more grown up and technical. But I’m really proud of that, and that is definitely something to carry forward—because I’ve just really loved playing with orchestral instruments. Strings and choirs, they are my favorite things. That’s my big one on this record. And, also, a lot of quite dry vocals—keeping it pretty raw and upfront. I mean, I’ve done that before, but it’s still really scary. Doing that is very exposing, and taking the risk of not hiding behind big production, flexing those muscles. Putting a song like “The Yellow Mile” on there, where it’s just me and a guitar, it’s high risk, you know?

I think string arrangements and choirs transform any album. They’re just game changers through and through. Maybe string arrangements is the answer to this question but, building off of that, I’m interested in whether or not there was an element you weren’t able to fully hone in on on Any Human Friend that, this time around, you had the resources or the hindsight to really go all in on this time.

It wasn’t the string arrangements, because the strings were kind of different on [Any Human Friend]. They were Mellotron, synth strings. The vibe was so different, it was like disco. Any Human Friend was so inhabiting a character and inhabiting a world that I’d really stepped into, whereas Big Sigh was allowing something to come through me. It was inward-looking, rather than expanding my parameters—which is what Any Human Friend felt like, in terms of sonic production and the identity of that record. It’s got that big sound, the lyrics are all in your face and slap you on the head. Maybe there was a lack of honesty in parts of that. I love that record, I think it’s a really well-constructed, composed album. It’s upfront but, maybe, it’s not honest—it’s not going that extra 50% inward to the core of the matter. It’s just very much like having fun, floating around on the surface and playing with that and playing with the guitar sounds. Big Sigh is one of the first times I think I’ve actually mixed honesty with candid lyrics. That’s the biggest takeaway.

Was that also what was motivating you to step back from the big rock sounds that were on Any Human Friend and really lean into the piano-centric, grounded and intimate spaces on Big Sigh that higher, louder registers so often can’t replicate in the same way?

Yeah. I think I just wanted to do something a bit different, like I want to pull away. But, again, I feel like so much of [Big Sigh]—in terms of its production, arrangements—just felt so much more unconscious than anything else before. I love the piano. I’m not very good at the piano, but I started transposing songs onto the piano and writing—like “The Lonely House,” a little instrumental. A piano, as well, is such a cinematic presence on the album, and it was really enjoyable to step into that world a bit more. But I don’t think I was thinking about any of this when I was doing it, like “Okay, so I’ve done that. Now I’ve got to do something different. I’m going to do this.” It was just like, “Oh, my God, I need to make this album. I need to write the songs, I need to get in the studio. I’m just gonna do whatever the song needs, whatever that demands of me.” And writing little hooks on a piano, as opposed to a guitar, that came very naturally. It wasn’t so much about choices, I don’t think.

I’m thinking about your lyricism, too. I’ve heard you talk in the past about your poetic roots with your family’s history. I got my start in writing with poetry, so that’s important to me. Can you tell me about how having family members who are poets has directly influenced your approach to the craft? And then, are there moments in your songwriting where you can, pretty quickly, notice just how growing up in that world is still impacting how you view and write about it?

My grandma was a poet and a couple of my other grandparents were musicians, but my parents aren’t either of those things—but they have such a love for it, I think, because they grew up in households that really cultivated that. So I think it trickled down. One hopes that you’ve inherited some kind of intrinsic skill for these things but, as I say, I also grew up in a house where my mom used to read to me and my brother before bed everything single night until I was about 10. She would read us either some poems or we would read a story over the course of a few days. And that’s just pretty cool. I remember, when I was a seven-year-old, I was really interested in poetry and creative writing. And you’re just absorbing everything. You’re a sponge when you’re a kid. I mean, Ted Hughes wrote some pretty intense stuff; a lot of my mom’s favorite poetry was quite intense—but what an environment to grow up in. And, of course, that’s affected how I write.

I think I’ve been inspired more in a zeitgeisty way lately, because there’s definitely been such a big push towards really direct lyrics—and I really like it, as a concept. But I think, in the past few years, I’ve actually really started to miss those real crazy, poetic, image-laden lines that you sometimes hear for ages. This time around, I wasn’t going to pick a lane. I was just going to see what happens, and I think that’s why you’ve got this amalgamation. I really like weaving thick imagery into quite conversational language. You lure someone in while you’re just having a chat about emotions. But then, suddenly, if you’ve just directly implanted quite an intense, visceral image into their brain that they’re going to hear, they’re going to have that in their head whilst they’re hearing that combined with a melody.

Songwriting is just creating a perfect recipe, because you’ve got so many different tools at your disposal to translate the emotion that you want to. It’s incredible, the fact that you have words and music, but music encapsulates melody, arrangement, a choir—it’s like, why not go all out? I feel incredibly lucky that I grew up in a household that was so appreciative of beautiful language. It was a really lovely thing, and I don’t want it to get lost amongst too much direct, conversational lyric writing.

Of course. You have to find that balance. When I’m writing, my brain just naturally wants to go to that abstract place and I catch myself needing to be reeled back in—because no one is going to understand what I’m talking about. But, being the primary producer on Big Sigh, what did that grant you, in terms of bringing this vision all the way across the finish line? I mean, did you have to dig deep to establish more trust in your own voice, or did that side of things come much more natural this time around?

It was just super natural. I didn’t even really think about it. It’s one of those things, along the way, where I’ve realized I’ve been doing a lot of production for a very long time. And then, it was just calling a spade a spade, really. Coming into the studio with demos that are fully fleshed out, anticipating that, maybe, we’re going to change it and then you actually end up just re-recording those demos—because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, okay. I was doing a lot of these things.” You definitely have to feel confident to label yourself thus, and I think that’s just an age thing. Age and experience. That wasn’t anything that was intimidating to me. I was just so fixated on getting the songs good, I just didn’t really have time to think about these other things and get freaked out by them.

Well, having been doing this for over a decade now, when you reach that point, how do the stakes of an album like Big Sigh get raised? What reward are you chasing on this record that, right now, has never been more urgent when it comes to your songwriting and your performing?

My eyes on the prize were very different when I was 19 and starting out. I think, if you’re north of 30 and you’re still doing this, it’s about putting out consistently good records, putting on consistently good shows, being really fucking good at your job and still loving what you do. That’s the aim. I think, at this age, if you start putting hopes and dreams and all of this “I could be playing Madison Square Garden by this time next year”—it’s like, I’m a realist. That’s not going to be happening. But, as long as I have made a record that I love and that people connect with, then that’s job done and, then, I get to make another one—which is also really fun. I don’t like to look too far across the horizon.

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Matt Mitchell reports as Paste‘s music editor from their home in Columbus, Ohio.