Marika Hackman’s new album Big Sigh forms a perfect story arc with her debut album We Slept At Last. Back in 2015 I was bowled over by the arcadian perfection of that first album and was quick enough to snap up a ticket for the Cob Gallery, Camden launch show where I witnessed an apprehensive artist who yet didn’t understand what the audience could already see: a truly special artist on the cusp of an amazing career. She then drew on the enormous power-station-pop energy of her friends The Big Moon to drive the I’m Not Your Man (2017) and Any Human Friend (2019), not forgetting the lockdown album Covers (2020) and even an EP of Christmas songs on Wonderland (2016).
Big Sigh is a glorious sublimation of the pop and the pastoral sides of her career to date, and the allusion of a ‘sigh’ as a pause reflects that this is a look back on her life to make sense of things that touch us all: lust, love, anxiety, stress and facing your own mortality. Those highs and lows are reflected in the musical arrangements – very much a signature of her music – where tracks like ‘The Ground’ move from calm waters to a tidal swelling of strings and electronic interference, and ‘Hanging’ where the soft lament of a constricted relationship explodes at the end with the force of someone fighting against being “pushed underwater when I’m coming up for air”.
The self-analysis on the album goes hand in hand with the fact that, apart from strings and brass, Hackman plays everything else. It’s good to have friends in the studio when you’re finding your feet but despite Big Sigh being part therapy and part exorcism it demonstrates the full confidence of an accomplished songwriter and musician. The use of electronics and effects on the album to scuff things up works beautifully on tracks like ‘Vitamins’ with its mechanical ticks, treated vocal backing and Omnichord pops falling like rain near the end of the song. Also, the use of harmonies on the album would be enough to make heavenly choirs rip up their sheet music and slink home.
Marika Hackman’s gift of mixing light and dark lyrically and musically is preternatural, and there are not many artists who can balance the temperate with the bombastic so well. Big Sigh is lemon sharp and cuts like a poet’s scalpel, but for all it’s dark corners, as a piece of art, it is as perfect as a rockpool after a storm.
I’ll leave the final word to Marika: “This album took a long time to make. It was not easy, and by the time I got to the end of it I was quiet. I wanted to be away from it and let it sit in its own space. Now the dust has settled and I’ve got to re-enter the world of Big Sigh, and I’m excited.”
Marika Hackman socials: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | X (Twitter) | YouTube
Review by Paul F Cook
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