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.
If you couldn’t tell from the cover art – in which she stands, almost naked and totally deadpan, holding a piglet – on her third album, Hackman is both more exposed and more fun than she’s ever been. She’s far from the 22-year-old who emerged with her tender folk debut record in 2015, or even her swaggering experimental follow-up, I’m Not Your Man. Any Human Friend is like listening to a new artist: as she soars through electronic transitions, swears down the microphone and wields her electric guitar (see her scowling rock star performance in the video for The One), Hackman is more confident than ever. With her singles The One and I’m Not Where You Are, in particular, she delivers lethally sharp pop hooks. The more low-key moments cut just as deep, like her delicate ode to one-night stands, Come Undone (“I like it that you never let me stay the night”) and the synth-washed, androgynous alt-power ballad Send My Love.
There are strident songs about the crudest, most joyful, and most selfish bits of life: masturbation (with the surprisingly beautiful coo of “endooorphins …” on Hand Solo) and sex, being desperate for attention, and being totally emotionally unavailable. Hackman sings about wrestling her way out of norms; she can’t stand having a normal life or relationship, aches for something different and exciting, but doesn’t quite know what that is. So far, so human. None of these passionate songs hold any answers, but they capture that tossing-and-turning fervour meticulously, and on the closing title track, she arrives at gentle self-acceptance, sweetly reminding you that though “everybody wants to be made of stone”, we’re all just messy flesh and blood.
