I may be back to freezing my butt off here in Toronto, but if I’m honest, I have a new distraction that’s got me thinking warm weather and springtime. My music tastes are rather eclectic and they range from neo-classical music to industrial, electronica to symphonic metal, and what I listen to tends to shape what I’m writing –regardless of whether the music is sad or happy, aggressive or manic. And lately I’ve been expanding my horizons into neo-folk.
Following my discovery of SoKo last year (check out “First Love Never Die”!), I decided to foray further into neo-folk where I discovered Marika Hackman. She is a 22 year old from England, and her cover of Lykke Li’s “I Follow Rivers” had me snagged immediately.
So imagine my delight when I discovered that her debut album would be out in 2015. Well, now it’s out, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s amazing. And not only that, it’s an amazing album to put on while I write my current work-in-progress. Marika’s full album is available for streaming on her soundcloud.
When I say that the album is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time, I honestly mean it. I am a big consumer of music, but very rarely do I listen to an album on repeat for long — and this is looking like I’ll be listening to this one for a while. Hackman not only nails atmosphere and tone with her neo-folks riffs and droning synths, but her songwriting is enough to make any writer or music geek excited. Half the time her lyrics sound like poetry, and the depth of her words offer new interpretations with each listen.
The album opens with “Drown”, the lead single. Though I like this song, I won’t lie that I’ve listened to it so many times now that I skip it. The second track is called “Before I Sleep” and I almost wish it was the album opener. Hackman’s soft guitar, droning synths, and soaring voice make this song ethereal and almost otherworldly and is definitely one of my go-to tracks when I’m writing a scene in my young adult paranormal WIP.
The third track is one of my favourites from the album and it’s called “Ophelia”. I had heard it in complete acoustic previous to the album’s release, but the rhythmic drums in the official recording make the tracking haunting and a perfect complement the melancholic lyrics: “But did you hear the sun go down? | Silent as a child I found | Hiding in the midnight of my soul | I am ready now to let her go”.
The next two tracks are also big highlights for me. “Open Wide” is reminiscent of a Nirvana track and both the guitar and low singing keep with the melancholic feel of the album. “Skin” is a slower duet track with English singer Sivu and the dichotomy of the two voices in the bridge is heavenly: “I’m a fever in your chest | The burning sun I’m west”.
Did I mention the artwork was stellar?
“Claude’s Girl” is the sixth track on the album and it’s a more stripped down, folk track. The vocal work in the outro is fantastic too, and I think it really shows how well Hackman is at creating musical atmosphere. “Animal Fear” is the second single off of the album and it’s probably the most uptempo song on the album. The personification of savage animals makes for a pretty sick music video too. It’s downtempo again for “In Words” and there’s also some pretty interesting, haunting guitar work while Hackman sings about feeling lost and homesick.
I haven’t listened to the final four tracks too intensely just yet, but my general impressions are great. For me, the tracks “Monday Afternoon” and “Next Year” were a surprise because of the Celtic and almost medieval feel. Definitely a good tracks to write scenes set in the 1700s to. “Undone, Undress” is probably the slowest on the album. It’s reminiscent of Hackman’s cover of Lykke Li’s “I Follow Rivers”, and I can’t say I mind.
The album closes with “Let Me In” where the lyrics “we slept at last” are finally heard. It’s at this point that the motif of sleep and drowning comes to fruition, especially after all this talk of vainly searching and being lost: “I chanced into the lake to hide my tears, conceal my salty fears | She could be the light | Help me base a trail and they’ll follow | To a cruel, hard heartland”. It’s actually at the end of the album that you can best appreciate what Hackman has created: she hasn’t just written a bunch of songs and thrown them together for better or for worse. She’s created a cohesive mood, a complete unit, consistent from beginning to end. I find this very rare in modern music. I find that a lot of artists as of late just release albums with 12 songs and call it a day. Rarely do these songs work well together or complement each other in the way that the songs on this album do. It’s a welcome change. If you’re a fan of appreciating albums as a whole, I definitely recommend this one.
What are you listening to lately?
Lol, fail. BUT I do a few and I’ve nominated them below.
Jazz by Cristian Mihai is a novel about a lovesick Chris Sommers who leaves his hometown of New York City to go to Paris in pursuit of Amber, the outrageously beautiful but always-falling-for-the-wrong-guy type. But when Chris arrives in Paris, he is dismayed to discover that he and Amber still cannot be together: she’s with Jacques, another “wrong guy” painter who holds Amber’s interest. The more Chris learns about Amber and the complicated, deceitful life she’s built in Paris, the more dismayed he becomes.
Michael Cristiano 
