Marika Hackman: Big Sigh review – a sombre, introspective return | Pop and rock

Marika Hackman wrote Big Sigh during a tough spell. Trapped in her own thoughts over lockdown, the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter forced her way through creative deadlock until she had a breakthrough that resulted in her first album of original material since 2019’s acclaimed Any Human Friend. But where its predecessor was louche and hook-driven, this fourth studio album skulks deeper into her psyche, its occasional moments of catharsis upended by sombre piano interludes and bleak lyricism.

Hackman’s unease makes itself felt from the bitter little chuckle that opens The Lonely House to the half-despairing pep talks she feeds herself in No Caffeine: “Scream into a bag, try to turn your brain off,” she murmurs over a pummelling bassline. Coping mechanisms are ditched in breakup ballad Hanging, in which she feels “pushed underwater” by grief. On the deadpan Vitamins, she dismisses her own body as “a sack of shit and oxygen”.

Bodies are a recurring theme for Hackman, who can find horror-movie material in the everyday. But this preoccupation with blood and guts also extends to desire, breaking her out of her own head and back into the world: on the blistering Slime, she longs to “climb your spine and shake your mind, slide back and feel your bones crack”.

Marika Hackman wrote Big Sigh during a tough spell. Trapped in her own thoughts over lockdown, the Hampshire-born singer-songwriter forced her way through creative deadlock until she had a breakthrough that resulted in her first album of original material since 2019’s acclaimed Any Human Friend. But where its predecessor was louche and hook-driven, this fourth studio album skulks deeper into her psyche, its occasional moments of catharsis upended by sombre piano interludes and bleak lyricism.

Hackman’s unease makes itself felt from the bitter little chuckle that opens The Lonely House to the half-despairing pep talks she feeds herself in No Caffeine: “Scream into a bag, try to turn your brain off,” she murmurs over a pummelling bassline. Coping mechanisms are ditched in breakup ballad Hanging, in which she feels “pushed underwater” by grief. On the deadpan Vitamins, she dismisses her own body as “a sack of shit and oxygen”.

Bodies are a recurring theme for Hackman, who can find horror-movie material in the everyday. But this preoccupation with blood and guts also extends to desire, breaking her out of her own head and back into the world: on the blistering Slime, she longs to “climb your spine and shake your mind, slide back and feel your bones crack”.