Marika Hackman

26 | April 9, 2015 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

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THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

Not heard of Marika Hackman yet? You’re about to. ELLA WALKER interrupts the “grunge folkster” while she’s doing a pre-tour clothes wash to find out why she’s being branded ‘one to watch’

“I think it’s good to be strange”

Marika Hackman

Editor: Ella Walker email: ella.walker@cambridgenews.co.uk For breaking entertainment news for the city, visit cambridge-news. co.uk/whatson Follow @CamWhatsOn on Twitter

Marika TICKETS Hackman, The Portland ON HOT WHAT’S Arms, Cambridge, Tuesday,TICKETS April WHAT’S ON HOT 14 at 7.30pm. Tickets £8 from HOT TICKETS WHAT’S ON wegottickets.com/greenmind/ event/305267.

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Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | April 9, 2015 | 27

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

‘I

CAN’T seem to write a feel-good song however hard I try,” muses Marika Hackman wryly.

The 23-year-old does seem to slide inexorably in the other direction.

With a voice like flint, softly muted on the surface, cut through by a glinting edge, the Hampshire-born musician makes what she calls “abstract grunge folk”.

On the phone she’s light, funny and frank, while her lyrics read like melodic offcuts of graveyard poetry (“I’ve been weeping silent like a wound/ Won’t you stitch me up, or let the blood soak through?”).

“I honestly don’t know and it’s scary that I don’t,” she says on where her musical obsession with the gruesome comes from. “I’ve always been drawn to it in everything, whether that’s music or art or literature, I think I’m drawn to it because it affects me so much. I’m quite sensitive when it comes to violence, so when I’m trying to think of metaphors to describe stuff in my lyrics, it seems natural to want to go with something that is going to be the most engaging and hardhitting, and for me that is violent imagery.”

However gothic and macabre the writing though, shards of brightness do jut through. “At face value the lyrics are quite dark,” Marika admits. “I think when they’re combined with the melodies and taken in the context of the song as a whole, they’re actually quite hopeful, there’s a lot of light in there, which you don’t see if you just read them. When you hear them sung, I think they take on a whole different meaning that’s got a lot more twists and turns.”

Encased by a tangle of hair which she fickly switches from green to pink to white blonde and back to fawn, and prone to shrugging into outsized denim and checked shirts, Hackman’s been penning music and playing guitar since the age of 5. Completely self-taught (about four years ago her mother suggested she get singing lessons: “I was like no! Haha.”), even her record company considers her voice “strange”.

“I think it’s good to be strange,” she says, not phased in the least. “I’ve been called weird since I was little by all my peers at school. You know, I don’t mind being different, I think strange means different, and I think that’s a good thing.

“I guess my voice is a bit strange; it’s hard for me to know. I just sort of started singing at home because I was trying to write songs, and ended up just carrying on doing that.”

Fortunately some of the commercial nu-folk scene’s most talented artists took note. School friend Johnny Flynn helped engineer her first record deal, while Laura Marling acted as mentor, pushing Hackman to overcome an early shyness by dragging her out to dinner before a show and only getting her back in time to grab a guitar and race on stage. Then there’s her partnership with alt-J’s producer Charlie Andrew who she made her record, We Slept At Last, with, and who introduced her to Cambridge singersongwriter Sivu, aka James Page. “Charlie had been telling me about him, and him about me, and then James had a track that he wanted me to sing on, and then I had a track I wanted him to sing on, and we started working together.”

The pair, who both write songs that swim with atmospheric murkiness, eventually ended up touring jointly – you might have caught them at The Portland Arms.

When we speak, Marika’s just hanging out at her flat in London, “getting washing done, really boring stuff” in preparation for her first tour since the release of We Slept At Last.

This schlep around the country includes a return visit to The Portland and will be a lonelier one than previously; no Sivu, and Marika’s decided to play without a band for the first time in around a year. “They’re going to be quite intimate shows and maybe quite intense,” she says, explaining how she’ll be surrounded by a horde of different guitars onstage instead of fellow musicians. Not that she finds performing entirely solo intimidating. “No, no, no, in a way it’s almost less nerve-wracking because if I mess up, which I inevitably do most nights,” she breaks off with a self-deprecating laugh. “I can just stop and start again as I please; we’re not having to pull the whole band to a grinding halt and pick it up where we left off.

“I’m just excited about really connecting with audiences again,” she adds with genuine

“At face value the lyrics are quite dark. I think when they’re combined with the melodies and taken in the context of the song as a whole, they’re actually quite hopeful, there’s a lot of light in there, which you don’t see if you just read them”

28 | April 9, 2015 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News

THE HEADLINER: MUSIC

What are you listening to on repeat at the moment?

“That’s a tricky one. I’m really bad at listening to music. I find when I have got time off I just like to be silent, although saying that I have a very talented friend who’s just released her first track, she’s called The Japanese House. I’ve been listening to her stuff a lot. It’s really, really, really good.”

“I have a scar on my left eyebrow and the reason I have a scar there is I got bitten by a pig. That’s genuinely true, I swear to god it’s true”

enthusiasm. We Slept At Last follows in the wake of a string of EPs and digital downloads: 2013’s Free Covers, That Iron Taste and Sugar Blind, and 2014’s Deaf Heat. However, it’s a very separate entity to these meshed siblings.

“I set myself the challenge of no songs from EPs, so I had quite a long way to go,” says Marika. “Achieving that in the first place was a big relief and I really showed myself what I’m capable of, and then apart from that it was just taking it into the studio and seeing what would happen. I knew I wanted it to be a little bit more stripped back, a little bit more organic sounding than maybe some of the stuff on Deaf Heat or Sugar Blind, but it was just a ‘feel it as it goes along’ kinda vibe’.”

The result is a skein of songs that suck you in and charm with their unstudied nuance and that underbelly of shifting darkness. You can also hear shimmers of Hackman’s strongest inspirations: The Shins, Warpaint, Beach House, “then there’s classical musicians as well like Henry Purcell who was studying when I was at school, his choral music was very inspirational, as well as Vaughan Williams”.

Her musical talent often gets sidelined though thanks to the perfect ingredients for a media frenzy: Bedales Schools, Burberry and Cara

Delevingne. Hackman studied at the former, with the latter, and posed for the fashion house one time, for one eyewear shoot, and yeah, she is totally sick of being asked about it.

“I definitely do mind that. It’s got to the point now where a lot of time has passed and it was such a tiny, tiny part of my career. In that time I’ve basically released two albums worth of material and toured extensively across the UK and the world and people still want to talk about one day of my life!” she laughs, tiredly, not brattishly. “It’s so frustrating.”

What isn’t quite so frustrating is the hype around her being “one to watch”. “It’s a compliment and I really enjoy that, it’s really nice that people are excited about [my music].”

So she doesn’t feel under pressure to perform; to live up to expectations? “It’s silly to feel pressure from things like that because I just keep myself to myself and get on with whatever I’m doing, rather than taking note of what everyone’s saying; it’s a really risky game. But if it’s nice things like ‘Oh yeah, she’s one to watch’, then I just think ‘Oh! That’s nice!’ Not ‘Oh my god, I’ve got to deliver’.”

It’s a sensible approach, but as our interview draws to a close, I ask Hackman to tell me something surprising about herself and suddenly the gruesome imagery and Burberry angst dissolve into the best thing ever: “Ohh, let me think. I have a scar on my left eyebrow and the reason I have a scar there is I got bitten by a pig.”

No way – you didn’t! (I splutter).

“That’s genuinely true, I swear to god it’s true,” she laughs, and with that, she goes back to her washing.