Marika Hackman’s first album of new material in half a decade, Big Sigh, comes after a period during which the English singer-songwriter doubted that she could write music again. As such, the album acts as a purging of the intense emotions and expansive aesthetic interests she developed during that time period, laying bare a tumultuous internal monologue over lush orchestrations and prickly synths.
While Hackman, whose roots are in contemporary folk music, has previously ventured into pop bombast with songs like 2019’s “Hand Solo,” never has her music been as loud and grungy as it is on the guitar-driven “Big Sigh.” The lyrics are at turns direct and inscrutable, with plainspoken sentiments like “Radio silence/I don’t wanna fight it” set against riddles about love and the creative process: “We’ve got grease on our feet and a bag full of weather/And if it stays like this then I hope it carries on forever.”
Most of Big Sigh proceeds in the same vein as its title track, with Hackman looking inward with an often unkind eye. On “Hanging,” which helped break her writer’s block, she laments the way an ex-lover subjugated her, using visceral imagery of fingers down her throat and intubation to illustrate her oppression. Again, the tortured lyricism is accorded splashy production when the song abruptly morphs from reverb-heavy, sullen ambient pop to grandiose orchestral rock.
Hackman reveals varying levels of self-deprecation throughout the album, calling into question her own value as both a human and artist. On “No Caffeine,” a thrumming dream-pop song about coping mechanisms, she can’t help but admit, “You got me good/And I feel so stupid.” “Vitamins” traces Hackman’s negative self-talk back to her childhood, when she was called “a waste of skin,” and refers to the act of artmaking as “an exercise in stupidness.”
While Hackman’s morbid perspective could risk growing one-note, the songs’ ever-shifting sound and luxuriant arrangements add complexity and weight to the singer’s poetic and insular lyrics. With the introduction of distorted synths on “Slime,” Hackman’s pleas to “hold you in the night” are rendered even more urgent, as if numbing her pain with a hookup were a matter of life or death. Likewise, the glowing French horn and trombone on “Please Don’t Be So Kind” elevate the hook of “Would you give yourself away?” to a war cry—an invective to hold on to power even when hope feels scarce. While the lyrics offer a precious few glimmers of defiance, Hackman’s production choices, featuring mostly instruments played by the musician herself, have the verve to suggest not only an artistic resurgence, but a personal one.
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