Marika Hackman - Any Human Friend

The Guardian 100

(Sub Pop)
With deadpan humour and rock-star confidence, Hackman essays her own restive, messy desires, from denial to acceptance

The phrase Any Human Friend is taken straight from the mouth of a four-year-old. Singer-songwriter Marika Hackman says that she saw a child use it in a Channel 4 documentary, about kids who befriend elderly people with dementia. It immediately seemed to her that this had to be the title of her new album: an album that’s all about bodies, instinct, and childlike, unfiltered thoughts.

The Guardian 80

(EMI)

Breakup albums are standard fare in the world of pop and rock, but it’s hard to think of nearly enough that feature odes to women masturbating while subverting the heteronormative gaze. Enter British singer-songwriter Marika Hackman with her third album, and glorious songs such as Hand Solo (“I gave it all, but under patriarchal law, I’m gonna die a virgin”).

Queer sex, self-pleasure and a general wry frankness are consistent themes throughout Any Human Friend, which follows the end of Hackman’s four-year relationship with fellow musician Amber Bain, aka the Japanese House. Hackman has spoken lately of a newfound love of swimming, and on tracks such as the woozy, sweet-as-summer-wine Wanderlust you can feel the quiet meditativeness of moving through water as she wrings out the past – “Did I make her laugh, or was it just pretend?” – with disarming candour.

Pitchfork 73

The British singer-songwriter’s third album is a singular, extraordinarily horny, and occasionally bleak pop record largely about the complexities of queer desire.