Marika Hackman: ‘Even before coming out in public, my lyrics were all super gay’

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Everyone has that one huge, pivotal second in their life. Marika Hackman’s arrived early, when she was 17 years outdated and practically died as a result of a ruptured appendix. At the time, she brushed it off in a means solely a youngster may. But then got here the “huge f***ing massive panic attack” that set off a lifetime of continual nervousness. Hackman gulps down a mouthful of Guinness and units it down on the desk: “You know, I really should go get some form of therapy for that.”

Therapy’s nice and all however have you ever tried writing a music about it? The Hampshire musician, now 31, has spent over a decade unpicking her brush with dying in emotionally frank, perma-shifting music. It’s there on songs as early as 2015’s “Monday Afternoon” on which she breathes in the “sickly sweet of my rotting skin” towards folky instrumentals, and it caught round even when Hackman swung, gloriously and capriciously, into grunge-pop on her equally acclaimed follow-up data I’m Not Your Man and Any Human Friend. Hackman writes about different topics too, specifically queer want, of which she is an astute (and blushingly express) observer, however the appendix episode is one thing she tends to circle – even when she doesn’t imply to.

Hackman’s meditative newest album, Big Sigh, falls into that class. It wasn’t till the file was completed that she realised what it was about. “There’s these organic sounds, like the string arrangements, which is how I see these sweeping landscapes of childhood: freedom, lack of responsibility,” she says. “But they rub up against these heavier industrial sounds, which is very much aligned with my adult life living in a city, dealing with the chronic anxiety and depression that crept in when I was 18. There’s a real split: there’s the before and the after.” The turning level was that first ever panic assault. “It’s weird when you have such a clear distinction, it’s like a line in the sand.”

On the softly plucked “No Caffeine”, Hackman staves off panic by reeling off a self-help to-do record: “Occupy your mind, don’t stay home/ Talk to all your friends, but don’t look at your phone.” The recommendation is initially set to little various fluttering piano notes before a salvo of drums and an undercurrent of strings rise round her like heavy fog.

Hackman has usually been described as introspective however the adjective is incongruous with the one that greets me at an east London pub with an enormous hug. “I think it was a lazy word that got transposed loads,” she says. “Reflectiveness isn’t the same as being introverted. Taking your time to think about what you’re saying is actually quite confident.” Hackman does take her time to reply, pausing for just a few seconds every time – however by no means in a means that appears calculated, extra like she’s sifting by means of her ideas attempting to get them in order before talking them aloud.

Hackman later tells me that moreover the panic assaults, she’s at all times been comfy in her pores and skin – at the same time as a closeted teen rising up in Devon. “Maybe I’m not extroverted but I’ve always felt comfortable,” she says. “Which was helpful at school because kids are c***s.”

It should be disorienting, I counsel, seeing a spot open between the way you see your self and the way others see you. “It was frustrating,” she says. “It felt very passive and I’m not a passive person, but then you have to watch it go by like a bus and hope that if you just crack on doing you, at some point it’ll change.” One tag she has managed to stamp out is songstress. Urgh. “What an interesting word,” says Hackman, narrowing her eyes. “Is it even a word? Is shoehorning someone’s gender onto something so necessary?”

The title of Big Sigh is a testomony to the reduction Hackman felt at lastly releasing the file. She’s written complete albums in 10 months before; this one took two years. “It was my first real battle with writer’s block in 12 years,” she says. “I’m normally quite slick-wristed, but this just dragged on and then I lost my steam.” Even through the worst of it, deep down Hackman knew it could work out positive. “I’ve written about 70 songs now – why would I suddenly not be able to do this again? What would be different?” she thought to herself. “What I fear more is not wanting to write any more, like being in a relationship and falling out of love with it or something.”

Last yr, she was on tour along with her girlfriend Polly Louise Mackey (aka electro-pop musician Art School Girlfriend). Van life took its toll. “I imagine there’s going to be times in the next five years that are going to be the toughest they’ve been,” she says. Hackman, who did an artwork basis course in Brighton, has been increasing her inventive horizons these days. She lately began lino minimize printing on the behest of her good pal and fellow Hampshire native Laura Marling. The course of includes carving shapes out of a slab of linoleum with a scalpel. “F***, it’s so satisfying,” she laughs.

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Personally, Hackman got here out in 2014. Publicly, it wasn’t till 2017 with the discharge of I’m Not Your Man. That album, replete with grungy guitars and feminine pronouns, introduced her sexuality to the world – one thing she hesitated to do as a result of she feared it could outline her as a musician. “I mean, even before that, my lyrics are all gay as f***,” she says. “It was all queer longing, big time, but just not so on the nose.”

Hackman’s relationship with Mackey is the stuff of homosexual indie-pop legend. So, too, was her relationship with Amber Bain aka The Japanese House, which ended in 2018 after 4 years. “We dealt with it well, and we’re still really good friends,” says Hackman now. They’ve each written songs about each other since. Is it tough territory to tread – writing a music a couple of girlfriend or an ex? “I never want to make someone upset with something I’ve written but also at the same time, you can’t just be nicey-nicey at the cost of writing arresting, honest music,” she says. “I’ve been in relationships with people who couldn’t give a s*** – and I myself don’t mind it. Dating musicians, I think it’s very important to make a pact that they don’t get offended by anything you write and vice versa. Because otherwise, you’re hemming someone in creatively – and that’s not right.”

Hackman isn’t the sort to be hemmed in. Though Big Sigh veers from the lip-curling come-ons and horny irreverence of Any Human Friend, it nonetheless drips with want. On “Slime”, she serenades a stranger, “I wanna rearrange you/ Climb your spine and shake your mind/ Slide back and feel your bones crack.” It’s concerning the fall-out that got here with the start of her new relationship. “When we first got together, it was a slightly tricky situation and people got upset and people got pissed off,” she says. I suppose the music crowd in London is fairly small, I say. “Yeah, especially for lesbians,” she laughs. “It’s fine now, but it was so interesting that in that initial lust-filled insanity, we were also dealing with this crazy response. I hadn’t experienced something like that before.”

Typically, Hackman’s love songs are usually about an amalgamation of relationships versus anyone particular individual. “All my exes are gonna come around my house with pitchforks,” she jokes. But the reality is, she’s a romantic. “Always have been,” she smiles. “I didn’t come out until I was 19 so I just had these deep secret crushes on girls, and when it’s secret you don’t really get to flex it, so I went through school just harbouring these feelings.”

Secrecy begets depth – or as Hackman places it, “Having a secret crush is like edging yourself constantly.” It took a while for her to come back to phrases with the actual fact it couldn’t at all times be starry-eyed, lust-filled bliss in a relationship. “Stability isn’t appealing when you’re young,” she says. “You want it to stay at 100 miles per hour and when it doesn’t, you think something’s wrong – but then you live and you learn, and I realised that I can actually get s*** done and have someone I love.” She widens her eyes in mock shock. “Can you believe it?” Now, she lives an image of home bliss in east London with Polly and their canine, Sonny.

Hackman’s candour is endearing – and encompassing. She likes to sing about blood and guts; bones and bodily fluids; pores and skin and s***. Across Big Sigh, blood runs “fat and red”, ft are “greasy”, and arms are “breaking”. On the multi-textured “Vitamins”, Hackman sings, “Mum says I’m a waste of skin/ A sack of s*** and oxygen.”

“Water, blood, guts, sex, and slime is stuff we all have,” she insists. “I like universal topics that connect us, especially the ones people don’t want to talk about.” It’s humorous, Hackman provides, that we as people really feel so ashamed of one thing that unites us. “Why do we always want to feel we’re better than the sum of our parts? For f***’s sake, s***ing is literally the one thing we all do in the same f***ing way.”

Given her style for the grotesque, it’s fascinating that Hackman can’t abdomen horror motion pictures – she does, nonetheless, like to learn Wikipedia synopses of each single one. “I have always had a really profound reaction to violence in films,” she says. “It makes me incredibly, deeply sad. I’d get this knot in my stomach deep down and feel depressed for a long time.” Whether that knot comes from an empathetic place or a fearful one, Hackman is not sure.

Big Sigh discovered Hackman in a reflective temper. The author’s block meant she needed to attain additional again in her previous for inspiration. “The fact some of these emotions aren’t so immediate doesn’t negate their poignancy or intensity,” she insists. “They’re just buried deeper; and if Any Human Friend was peak queer then this is peak me. I’m not inhabiting any kind of persona with this record. There’s none of that. It’s the closest I’ve got to that ideal I’m trying to get to in terms of honesty and openness.” She pauses. “Still, I think I can go further.”

‘Big Sigh’ is out now by way of Chrysalis Records