Marika Explains It All

Marika Hackman, born in Hampshire 23 years ago this week, isn’t much of a rebel. Just as well. Otherwise, she could have ended up in accountancy. “Imagine!” she guffaws. “That seems like the most horrific choice I could ever make... I like when things are in order though. I dabbled with the idea that, with an office job, there be might be some sense of satisfaction in that. But then thinking about that day-in, day-out, particularly having now explored a different career, it would be impossible.”

Instead Hackman made her parents, both animators, proud and followed the precarious path marked ‘life as a creative type’. Coming up with songs from the age of five, in her double digits she was enrolled in the prestigious, liberal paradise of learning that is Bedales School. With alumni like Lily Allen, Patrick Wolf, Luke Pritchard and Hackman’s close pal Cara Delevingne, you quickly surmise it is a place with a certain pedigree.
Music has always been tied to this intangible idea of “authenticity” and a niggling sense that, unless you’re a salt-of-the-earth working class type or, even better, emotionally damaged beyond repair, you’ll never be “4 REAL” as a bloody young Richey Edwards once carved.
“People always want a story. They want to know that you’ve ‘risen’ from despair. For me, songwriting is about a human experience. Not necessarily your life experience. It’s about what’s going on in people’s minds, a completely universal thing. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you grew up.
“I feel so incredibly lucky that I went to a school like that. Because I registered that whilst there, I was using it to its full capacity rather than just floating through and not appreciating what I had. Do the songs not mean as much because they’re not based on some terrible back story? That’s not it at all.”
A case well made. Sure Joe Strummer was a middle class kid and even Noel ‘I wrote songs on the building site’ Gallagher must reckon Bedales is alright – his daughter Anaïs attended.
On debut album We Slept At Last, recorded with friend and alt-j producer Charlie Andrew, Hackman shakes free of those moorings. Her four EPs to date have found her twisting in different sonic directions and now she’s arrived at a dark place all of her own. What marks the spot? A voice that would rather intone than glide, discordant touches (the amateur synth player admits “I hit random wrong notes that end up sounding fucking cool”) and a love for Kurt Cobain’s dips into the grimly corporeal. So everything pure eventually blackens, chemicals (internal and external) hold destructive sway over our bodies and the monsters under the bed would be a cause for concern if they weren’t so intriguing.
“It’s like pulling these dark strands in my mind,” she explains. “I pull up any emotions that I’m confused about or that are bubbling much further below the surface than I can perceive and put them into songs. That gets rid of them. It is cathartic because you’re pulling it out. You’re also putting it out there where people can judge you: ‘this is my worst shit.’ When it’s me as a normal person, I’ve gotten rid of all of that and I can sit here in front of you as – I think! – quite a sane person.”
Marika would also quite like to be a person who goes unnoticed when they walks down the street. Having toured with alt-J and worked with Andrew, she envies the fact they can garner critical plaudits, play in arenas, and still avoid the spotlight.
“I’m not chasing fame and fortune,” she says without hesitation. “That’s not what I want.”
Tougher to do when you’re trading under your own name...
“Damn!” comes the response from a songwriter who already knows it’s a tough trick to pull off. Her “biggest frustration in the world” is that the fact she appeared in a Burberry commercial when she was 19 (she immediately decided modelling was not for her) still makes the headline of a lot of her interviews.
“It is very lazy,” she continues. “Maybe with a guy it wouldn’t be so pressed upon. I always get asked about fashion tips and things that are incredibly awkward as well.”
About to head out on the road, she’ll be keeping a low profile. Keeping a clear head is also key, though she didn’t take lessons from The Antlers when she played with them in 2014. Frontman Pete Silberman has found mediation helps him deal with the gruelling touring slog.
“They were all definitely doing a lot of meditating and stuff backstage,” Marika remembers. “I was probably being really annoying wandering around with my guitar! I don’t do any of that sort of thing but I ring home a lot and keep grounded. Try to see friends along the way. Focus on the task on hand...”
No TVs out the hotel window?
“Hell no!” she laughs. “I’m like the least crazy party animal ever. I should be an accountant.”