“I’m going home to intubate. ‘Cause every time we talk I suffocate”. When things become overwhelming in a person’s life – whether it be related to a relationship or work life or physical/mental health circumstance – it can feel like one is drowning in a sea, gasping for air. The outbreak of Covid in 2020, although manifestly troublesome, positively forced many creatives to pause their lives. This unexpectedly fortuitous pause allowed musicians such as the English multi-instrumentalist and skilled songwriter Marika Hackman to take a step back and reanalyse what keeps causing her hyperventilating moments of anxiety.
When Hackman moved back in with her parents during lockdown, it halted a potentially prolific career that was churning out courageously written albums every 2 years (from the haunted nocturnal forests of We Slept At Last, to the louder rock of I’m Not Your Man, to the sexual-liberating synths of Any Human Friend) and with the lack of freedom came writer’s block. So the Hampshire-native’s first record in five years, the mentally-exposing and meticulously-produced Big Sigh – that woves its simple yet effectively somber mood with the tone of its strings, piano and acoustic guitar to musically colour its uses of respiratory connotations – expresses the feeling of relief in many ways; from breaking through creative burnout to the realisations of what has been causing her many debilitating apprehensions.
The chamber pop ‘No Caffeine’ addresses Marika Hackman’s panic attack problem. The musician suffered her first panic attack when aboard a flight from Finland after her appendix burst and had a therapist called Louise during the making her fourth album to help deal with psychogenic reoccurrences. Resembling the kind of list that Renton reads out at the beginning of Trainspotting, Hackman narrates on what she will do to reduce the enfeebling stress. “Talk to all your friends, but don’t look at your phone / Try to get some sleep, no caffeine. Go and see Louise, maybe watch TV. Don’t forget to wash, don’t become a write-off. The mentioning of her psychologist adds a truthful touch, while lines: “Remember how to breathe, maybe try and fuck. Stay away from love, maybe take your clothes off,” adds her idiosyncratically shameless tongue-in-cheek playfulness to her words.
The strings that sway around the indie rock guitars and rolling drums on this track, as well others on Big Sigh, are the result of Hackman pairing up with producers Charlie Andrew and Sam Petts-Davies; the former has produced all of alt-J’s albums, while the latter engineered Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool. Which is why it’s unsurprising that Big Sigh’s opener ‘The Ground’ has a piano arrangement and aura that springs to mind ‘Daydreaming’ from said album. Hackman repeats on the stunningly beautiful intro: “Gold is on the ground. I was happy for a while” with dejected yet obscured vocals. Going back to her parents home during lockdown made Hackman realise how much she misses the innocent less anxious time of childhood. The mechanical texture of the vocoder and the way that the song abruptly ends with a crackling destruction could symbolise that the age of infancy has crumbled and is now just a memory.
Another song that recalls Radiohead, is the experimental electronic-orchestral ‘Vitamins’. Specifically the effervescent instrumental ending. But before that we hear Hackman’s altered vocals recall Imogen Heap as a juxtaposition between sweeping cinematic strings and the persistent knocks of industrial bricks, as well psychedelic moments of mediation, provide a Bon Iver-reminscent soundtrack to a song with typically audacious lyrics: “Mum says I’m a waste of skin, a sack of shit and oxygen / But Dad thinks I could be something. If I eat my vitamins, I could be up in a hall of fame.” Although the 31-year-old has clarified in interviews that it’s not an autobiographical account of her parents but is a track about how self-doubt can manifest when seeing yourself from a high standard perspective of family and partners. The track begins with a deep inhale as she struggles to breathe with the expectation that is seemingly put upon her.
The breezy latest single ‘Slime’, sees Marika Hackman showcase the brazen risqué lyrics that made previous records ‘I’m Not Your Man’ and ‘Any Human Friend’ so refreshingly compelling. Both evocative and riddling, Hackman sings: “Slide back and feel your bones crack. So sublime, turn to slime /Spit me, oh, I’m so sticky. Turn to glue when I think about you.” While continuing Hackman’s motif of exhibiting embarrassing liquids; ‘Cause you want to drink my blood. Is it true, do you think you’re in love? (On the blunt and brutal ‘Blood’) and the nose-bleeding on the music video to ‘No Caffeine’ are other examples.
Before starting a new project, Marika Hackman likes to conclude albums as if they are the end of a chapter in her life and closer ‘The Yellow Mile’ fulfils this purpose. The most musically straight-forward track on Big Sigh, it hears the songwriter take deep breaths within acoustic-guitar accompanied folk vocals. It references previous songs on the album such as the opener in the line “But gold was on the ground”, while finishing the song with the repeated request: “Show me the bones that we buried outside. No home grown, this is better,” to signal the end of a malfunctioning and suffocating relationship. After this reflection, Marika Hackman has possibly, even though temporarily, exhaled the worrying thoughts that have had a stranglehold over her mind for so long.
