UK-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Marika Hackman will release her self-produced new album Big Sigh this week, and today she shares a final preview of the record before it’s out in its entirety on Friday. Following the previously shared singles “No Caffeine,” “Slime,” and “Hanging” comes album-closer “The Yellow Mile.”
One of the many highlights on Big Sigh, and the final track written for the record, “The Yellow Mile” is Marika at her most authentic and intimate. Intended to be the opposite of a grand finale, the song finds Marika wanting to feel small again, as she explains, “I wanted to go back to my roots as a songwriter, me and a guitar, crafted, very immediate.”The track arrives alongside an unsettling video co-directed by Marika and Nàtalia Pàges that sees Marika being buried alive.
Big Sigh, Marika Hackman’s first album in four years, is the “hardest record” Marika has ever made and is, as its title suggests, a release of sorts. With the release of her 2019 album Any Human Friend, Marika felt liberated and began embracing her queer identity and sexuality in a big way. But lockdown in 2020 soon left her stifled and isolated, unable to craft a fully formed song, and wondering if she’d ever write again. After a hard-fought journey back from a lengthy creative dry spell, Marika brings us Big Sigh, which she co-produced with Sam Petts-Davies [Thom Yorke, Warpaint] and long-term collaboratorCharlie Andrew (Alt-J). She also performed every element of the record, save for the brass and strings. Big Sigh finds Marika venturing into fresh terrain, with a constant tug between organic instrumentation and the harsher dynamics of synthetic distortion. It’s like walking into an abandoned industrial wasteland covered in poison ivy, with a blend of sadness, stress and lust, but mostly – and crucially – relief.
Big Sigh is the latest advancement by a musician who has remained inventive with every release. Over the years her genre-morphing sound has been compared to “the lovechild of Nico and Joanna Newsom”, Blur and Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey, while the Guardian’s five star review of 2019’s Any Human Friend praised her “lethally sharp pop hooks”. On Big Sigh, however, Marika ventures into fresh terrain.
Where some of Marika’s early records pummelled the gut, Big Sigh toys more with the mind. Leaving the carnal days of her 20s behind, this album is less a photo-real documentation of the moment, but more like an artist peering through a gap in a door to reassess her former life. If it’s her haunting soundscapes that first lure you in, it’s her lyrical acrobatics that latch onto your brain – images of gore, yearning and off-kilter romance. In her never-ending pursuit of untangling her internal universe and exploring complex melodies, she has made her most honest and brave album yet.
Big Sigh is available to pre-order now, with an exclusive indie stores colored vinyl, and signed formats with a bonus acoustic CD from the D2C store HERE. Marika has announced a January instore tour which will be followed by a headline UK and EU tour.
