Marika Hackman - Big Sigh

There’s nothing like a global pandemic and crippling anxiety to stop creativity dead in its tracks. Coming off the back of the critically-praised openness of ‘Any Human Friend’, folk-turned-alt pop wunderkind Marika Hackman was arguably destined to struggle creating ‘Big Sigh’, an audible release of four years of uncertainty. The outcome of that anxious battle manifests as perhaps her most personal, but also her most diverse. In the first three tracks she explores Radiohead-esque soundscapes on ‘The Ground’, delivers the most commercial sounding list of panic attack prevention techniques on ‘No Caffeine’, and glides into the title track’s grandiose, multi-instrumental nod to her folk upbringing. It opens a record that lives happily in its inconsistency, from the Scandi-pop of ‘Hanging’ to the piano-instrumental of ‘The Lonely House’. Perhaps less fluid than the lust-driven ‘Any Human Friend’, the album’s gentle chaos reveals itself as remarkably relatable. An experimental outcome of emotional turbulence, ‘Big Sigh’ never tries to find a throughline beyond just that, a musical recognition that anxiety can both stifle and drive the creative process. That Marika supposedly rediscovered her musical inspiration in a pub toilet is fitting for an album that, even following the previous record’s penchant for sex, lays her at her most bare.