Q&A: Marika Hackman Brings Latest Album Big Sigh to North America
MARIKA HACKMAN IS READY FOR HER RETURN TO THE STATES — After touring her latest album, Big Sigh, in Europe, she’s primed to kick off her North America tour in September. Released this January, Big Sigh is Hackman at her most honest. Lyrics detailing years of anxiety hold listeners in an emotional state, building toward release. Hackman distorts her haunting instrumentals to create the sonic space that carries the album. As she prepares for tour, she’s enthusiastic about seeing how audiences across the pond resonate with these songs.
This tour brings Hackman to the US for the first time in five years. She began working on Big Sigh in 2019, with the years since blocked by lockdown and unmanageable anxiety. The album embodies Hackman’s perseverance. She admits that she doesn’t give up easily, and whether the challenge is learning a new instrument or experimenting with a new sound, she gives it her all. Breaking through writer’s block is no easy task, but Hackman finds strength in trusting her gut and continuing to try. In many ways, Big Sigh is an album of breakthroughs; string and brass arrangements create a full, embodied sound surging alongside raw and truthful lyrics to an emotional release.
Hackman began her music career in her late teens. Now, over a decade later, she reckons with her life experiences. From her first brush with true fear and anxiety following a burst appendix at the age of 17, to the lockdown-induced isolation, loss of control, and panic that swallowed most of the world, she pushes through every instance. She claims Big Sigh as the hardest record she’s ever made, but beyond the difficult journey lies an album that resonates with audiences across the world.
Read below to learn more about the process of creating Big Sigh and get ready to see Hackman in cities across North America.
LUNA: You’re about to kick off your first US tour in five years. What are you most looking forward to with this leg of tour?
HACKMAN: I’m really looking forward to seeing audiences across the ocean connect with the music. Playing in Europe is great, but there’s something special about playing a show on another continent, and maybe it’s not sold out but the people there are really connecting with the music. I’m also playing shows in some places I’ve never been, so I’m really looking forward to that.
LUNA: Anywhere you’re particularly excited about?
HACKMAN: I’ve heard some really great things about Tucson, Arizona!
LUNA: Any favorite moments from the road so far?
HACKMAN: I played a show in Berlin, which was really, really fantastic. The crowd was awesome. I felt that real connection that we were talking about with them. So that was really cool. That was the pinnacle moment this year.
LUNA: I was impressed to learn that you performed every element of your album besides brass and strings. How did you come to play so many instruments?
HACKMAN: I started on a piano when I was a really little kid. I was three or four, and I wasn't very good at it, but I carried on with it until I was like 14. I found it too difficult, and while it gave me access to the musical world, it didn't feel very natural to me. So I then looked elsewhere. I popped onto the drums and the bass and then taught myself guitar. I'm quite a curious person, and I like to set myself challenges. The thought of learning an instrument is an exciting prospect for me, and I don't give up very easily. I do tend to sit down and actually do these things. Also, I was quite bored as a teenager. I lived in the middle of nowhere, so I had a lot of time on my hands, so I thought, might as well.
LUNA: Does playing on the album rather than just singing change the experience of making the album?
HACKMAN: I think it does. I've never done it any other way. I've always been playing, even when I made my second record, and we were recording it live. So I don't know what it feels like, but I know that it would feel very different. I would then be in the control room, just using my ears and listening, rather than feeling and thinking about it in that way. But I think it would be a good thing to explore one day because it's a very different way of working, and it does mean you can record more things at the same time, rather than layering it all up
LUNA: You talk about this being the “hardest record” you’ve ever made. What helped you to push through the hard parts?
HACKMAN: I don't give up very easily. I wasn't going to put to bed a bunch of songs that I felt had potential. When I was writing it, even though it was so difficult to write, and it took so long, I knew that eventually I would get it done if I just kept on trying. The moral of the story is it's not going to happen if you give up. The only thing you can do is just keep going. That was the secret.
LUNA: How long did you work on it?
HACKMAN: I started writing elements of it before Any Human Friend came out. That was 2019 so I worked on it for close to three and a half years.
LUNA: Any Human Friend has a very different sound from Big Sigh. What was it like making that transition?
HACKMAN: Quite easy. I love changing it up from record to record. It all depends on what mood I'm in, where I am in my life, and what the songs demand of me. So it always feels very natural to me. Although now that we're playing the songs live, I do miss Any Human Friend. It was a very very fun record to make, write, and perform. So at least I still get some enjoyment out of it by playing the songs live. But Big Sigh is a little bit more intense.
LUNA: How did you land on the name Big Sigh?
HACKMAN: My partner and I say it to our dogs whenever they do a big sigh. I realized whilst I was making the record that I was doing a lot of big sighs, so it became a thing in the studio for us to say, “Oh, big sigh.” I think the record is a big release — it's holding a lot of emotions there for you to listen to, and then it lets them go. I realized it made perfect sense of the title.
LUNA: Can you tell me about the album artwork? Who did it?
HACKMAN: It was done by Brian McHenry, who lives in Ireland. I saw his art on Instagram, and I was in the headspace of thinking about what the visuals would look like. I knew I didn’t want a photo. I wanted it to be a painting or a drawing. He had these pencil drawings that felt like sketches, which is kind of how the record feels. They're very immediate. It's like an honest reflection of what's going on. He had this theme in his work of quite sparse and broad natural landscapes with moments of urban intricacies going on in the front. I really liked that. We worked together and ended up with the trolley and the mountains. We wanted to capture this idea of space. It’s a huge theme on the record, sonic space, dynamics, and focusing in on the funny little shit bits about humanity. Amongst the vastness of the world that we live in, there's that metaphor of the visual.
LUNA: Can you tell me a bit more about space as a theme on the record?
HACKMAN: I wanted to make it a really dynamic record. I wanted to stretch the parameters. If you're making music you set parameters with what you do. You can have something close, dry, and loud, and then you can put loads of reverb on it, and it suddenly feels really far away. You can have it quiet, quiet, quiet, and then really, really loud. Once you've set those parameters, you've set the space that that record sits within. It was really about pushing both sides of those dynamics to the maximum to make it feel quite intimate but vast at the same time
LUNA: Where did you find inspiration for this album?
HACKMAN: Well, I like to go swimming a lot to clear my mind. I find that being in the pool and doing lengths is a good way for me to filter things down. Also, when I'm walking to and from the pool, I listen to demos that I'm working on. I'll have it going around in my head, and as I'm swimming, it kind of irons everything out.
I started writing a lot of Big Sigh in the countryside at my parents’ house during lockdown. I think that environment informed the rural, pastoral sound on there. There’s a meeting of organic and industrial. Then I had to come back to London, which is a very different space. I absorbed everything around me, but there was not any place in particular that specifically stirred something inside me,
LUNA: You are now over 10 years into your music career, which is incredible. What is something that you wish you knew at the beginning?
HACKMAN: It's a funny one because I don't think I would do anything differently. I wonder if I knew anything else, how it would have changed the course of my career. I would say, follow your gut. When you do that, it's not as scary as you think it's going to be. With certain things along the way, decisions I've made, and big, scary things that I've done, it would have been nice to know, “You're on the right track, and you can do that.”
