By Greg Wong

Photo by Greg Wong

The enchanting English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer Marika Hackman has crossed the pond to tour in North America for the first time in several years. She made her first US stop at The Sinclair in Cambridge, on Saturday September 7^th, and will continue onward through the first week of October. Her latest album, Big Sigh, was released earlier this year in January, and it represents the culmination of four years of work to overcome stifled creativity and stagnation. We caught up with Marika at home in the UK, a few days prior to her journey to North America to talk about the tour, how people perceive her through her music, and her creative process. 

Note: Some questions and answers have been slightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Allston Pudding: So you’re about to start tour very soon, a couple days right?

Marika Hackman: Yeah, fly out on Wednesday [September 4th]. So… soon. 

AP: This is going to be your first time back in the states in five years, how are you feeling about that? Excited?

MH: Yeah very excited! It’s really exciting to come back. It’s a very different touring experience to touring the UK and Europe. I feel like I’ve done that one so much, it’s like it’s so familiar, where it’s really fun to tour places where you’ve never been before or places you been quite rarely. Yeah, I’m pretty pumped especially because there’s places on this tour that I haven’t actually been before, which you don’t get a lot. Yeah, very excited.

AP: Is there anything in particular you’re looking forward to doing when you’re here? Or do you think you’ll even have time?

MH: Well I think this time around we will have time, which is great ‘cause the past couple of times I’ve toured America it’s been just in a van. So we’ve been like driving all day, and then just to the venue, then play the show… drive, wake up, drive. It’s like you can’t really do much, whereas we’ve got a kind of like little RV thing this time so we’ll get most of our driving done overnight, which means I can finally actually properly explore a lot of these places. That’s what I’m mostly excited about, and also ‘cause I’m able to bring my band over from the UK for this one, which is great ‘cause I haven’t been able to do that before. So I’m excited to be on a little kind of family trip.

AP: So I wanted to talk a little bit about your new album, Big Sigh. It’s a shift away from your last album but it’s also a bit of a throwback to your original, more melancholy style; “full circle,” I’ve heard you describe it previously. Now that you’ve had some time to tour it in Europe earlier this year, how has it settled with you and your audiences? I know you mentioned some challenges grappling with assembling a cohesive setlist with your older material and your newer stuff. How’s that been going?

MH: Doing setlists I find really, really difficult. It always comes down to what kind of vibe I want to bring, I suppose. I’ve mucked around with genre so much over the past four records, but yet you know there’s stuff that people are going to want to hear from the older things. Trying to work those all in together is actually quite difficult, so for this tour I’ve gone for quite like a fun, upbeat set. I just think it’s more fun for everyone. It keeps the energy up. It’s what I would want to go see. But certainly yeah, like in Europe it’s been going down well and it’s been really nice to actually play the songs live. A lot of the new songs are actually kind of highlights for me in the set to play, I guess because they’re also kind of fresh and it’s a bit more exciting. It’s been cool to actually get responses from people rather than just, you know, screaming into the void, as it were.  

AP: Do you have any particular favorites of the newer songs, or is it just a relief to play any of the new songs?

MH: No, “Blood” is my favorite to play. I don’t know why, I just really enjoy singing it. And then “Hanging” as well, I love because the big ending is a real set highlight. I think it’s a real moment in the set. It’s the ones that you can really get like, emotionally connected with. Shredding and things like that is always fun, but I definitely find that those quiet moments where you’re really kind of like, in touch with the song, it’s the most rewarding.

AP: You mentioned crafting setlists, so have you adjusted how your setlist has gone based off that feedback you’ve gotten from performing them live and seeing how audiences respond in real-time?

MH: Yeah I think it was more like, doing festivals over the summer, ‘cause then I had a festival set. Festivals are so different to playing a headline show, and coming out of the festivals I was like “oh, a lot of that festival set actually worked really well,” and we’d thrown in even older stuff like “My Lover Cindy” and things like that we haven’t played for ages, and I thought actually it would be nice to bring a bit of that energy over to the US and kind of, like I said, keep the set a little bit more upbeat.  There was definitely a big intense middle section in the last tours, so I’ve kind of shaved the edges of that a little bit, so it’s not too much.

Photo by Greg Wong

AP: You’re quite open about how difficult it was for you to get through writing Big Sigh, how taking a break from songwriting during the pandemic really screwed up your momentum, and how that’s how you encountered your first real writer’s block. Is it a relief to actually have these songs out in the world and do you worry about writer’s block returning?

MH: Well it’s a massive relief. Getting this record out in January just felt like a really kind of like, big moment because before anything’s been released, I think you lose a bit of touch with it, especially when you’ve been sitting on it for ages. I’m not gonna like, keep listening to that record up until it gets released, you kind of almost put it on a shelf and then you kind of unpack it again. But what’s fun about releasing it is you get to unpack it with everyone else, which is actually really enjoyable rather than just going through it all on your own.

Writer’s block… the thing is with writer’s block is I’m one of those people that if something is a bit scary but maybe it’s out of your control, then there’s no point in being scared of it. So if it comes back, it comes back. I can’t really do anything about that. So we’ll see. The thing with it is, it’s more frustrating than anything else, so if it’s a case of me being frustrated for a few months or whatever, it’s fine. On the flipside, I’ve been writing and I feel quite sort of… full. I think it’s going to be a lot easier to write this next record, like I’ve already got songs in the bag and it feels like it’s flowing quite well, so I can’t foresee–I mean, I might be jinxing it now–but I can’t foresee going back into that kind of thing. It was a very strange, different time, so hopefully… easy peasy now, grease the wheels and go.

AP: You’re often described as “a shapeshifter.” That’s something that keeps constantly coming up. I’m just wondering: does that label feel accurate to you? Does that feel correct?

MH: Yeah, I can understand it. I think so. I get it that in the sense that like, my shell has like, shifted. I think my skin is ever-changing, but I think at the core I think there’s a through line. Through all of my records–as different as they may be–there’s definitely like an essence that is consistent, and it’s just consistent with me ‘cause it’s obviously by virtue of the fact that I am the common denominator of all of these things. But yeah, I like the name “shapeshifter,” I think it’s cool. I’ve tried very hard to play with different genres, and test myself, and try new things, so it’s kind of nice that you know this far in, people have really clocked that.

AP: That’s good, because I’ve noticed that people always seem to be trying to define you. I know that at least in some of your older interviews, you’ve talked about people calling you introspective and how you felt like that wasn’t really an accurate label. I think that’s probably to do with just your general sound, at least with your earlier stuff and more with this newer stuff as well. Do you think people get an accurate sense of who you are just by listening to you music, or do you think people are kind of making assumptions from what they hear?

MH: I think it’s both. I think there’s probably things that people hear in my music where they come to conclusions about who they think I am, that I might sit here and deny, but most likely are actually true. ‘Cause we all have a perception of who we are as people anyway, and often it’s not truly matched with who we really are. I think if I’m striving to write music that’s honest as possible, there’s going to be things floating out there in the ether that people are going to pick up on that I probably haven’t even noticed because they’re so inherent to me. So I kind of like that, that people can make these assumptions and I might sit there and go “woah, that’s so not true!” and actually it probably is on some level, if I’m putting that stuff out there and it’s come from me. I mean there’s stuff like, on the nose, where it’s like you could say that yes I clearly suffer with anxiety, I can get pretty introspective and get pretty depressed and that can happen too, but I also have a sense of humor and I deal with stuff in that way, like the way that I play with words, maybe I’m a bit of a control freak, there’s like–I can see very clear bits there, but actually think it would be very interesting to hear a bunch of people say what who they thought I was because I’m sure I would learn a lot about myself to be honest.

AP: It’s like you might be presenting more of yourself without even realizing it: it’s a bit of a subconscious thing.

MH: A hundred percent. Sneaking stuff out there.

AP: I can see that there’s a lot to take from that, depending on how deeply you look into it.

MH: Yep, the layers! There’s layers and layers.

AP: It’s a good thing to have! So you mention that you kind of have some idea of where your music’s headed. What does the future hold for your music? Do you think you’ll continue in a certain direction, or experiment more? How do you think you’re going to go about that?

MH:  I think something that I’ve learnt from the last record is not shoving an identity onto something before it’s ready for it, and not maybe limiting myself to my idea of what a record is going to be. Writing to a [self-imposed] brief is fun but also I think with Big Sigh–obviously it was a hard write–but I really enjoyed kind of just like letting go of any of that perception of what it was going to be and just allowing songs to come. So as far as I’m concerned, wherever it goes next, I’m sure this record will make itself known to me and there will be certain themes, and will be a palette, and I’m sure there will be like, topics that arise that I’m going to push and pull and see where we can go. But generally–and I’d say this is across the board with all of my records–I’m very just focused on the craft of songwriting and just trying to write songs that I think are really good, and not focusing too much beyond that. ‘Cause I can kind of like sometimes jump into like, riffs, or moods, and tones and things before maybe I’ve actually structured the song fully or finished writing it, and this time around I really want to just perfect those moments and then leave them quite open-ended so in the studio we can really have a lot of fun and kind of build them up there rather than re-recording demos.

AP: Are you the kind of person who–when inspiration strikes–is like “I always have my voice notes app ready to go. If I have it in the moment, I need to record it or it’s gone forever,” are you that type of person? Or is it more like you sit down and say “I’m going to write a song now,” and that’s when it all comes up?  

MH: It’s a mix. To be fair, I never really sit down and go “I’m going to write a song,” I’ll sit down and just kind of noodle or I’ll kind of work on half bits that are flying around and eventually something happens. But I write a lot of stuff in my notes, and I do record a lot of voice notes. I’m also of the opinion sometimes that if I don’t have the time to get something down… if it’s good enough I’ll remember it, which my partner finds like, insane. But it kind of works! I remember a lot of stuff and they usually turn into songs, so I think it’s a good method, but I’m not like militant about having to be somewhere that I can get stuff down. It’s all serendipitous, like it happens when it happens.

AP: So I did note in one of your other interviews that you mentioned that sometimes when you’re writing music you just kind of sit down at the TV and turn on some brainless show. Do you have any recommendations? What is your guilty pleasure, brainless, reality, trash TV show?

MH: It is so brainless! I basically need something on that I’m not really watching, so I just want to preface that with that…

AP: It’s okay, you can admit it! I watch trash TV too.

MH: I mean yeah it’s a lot of Real Housewives, particularly Real Housewives of New York, they’re my favorites, and then Real Housewives of Beverly Hills but they’re a little bit too unhinged; I find it quite distracting. And a lot of Below Deck as well.

AP: I love Below Deck.

MH: Yeah it’s good trash! It is perfect because you can really just like zone in and out. There’s no real like, plot going on that you need to follow. You can just kind of have it on, so… yeah.

AP: I think that was pretty much everything I had for you! Thank you for that. Thank you for talking to me.

MH: Pleasure!