Announces North American tour dates for 2019.

Rock provocateur Marika Hackman will release her highly anticipated new album Any Human Friend on 9th August via Sub Pop in North and South America and AMF Records for the rest of the world. Marika also unveils her slap-in-the-face, Will Hooper-directed (IDLES, APRE) video for current single“i’m not where you are.”

The FADER had this to say of the video, “Hackman is preparing to release Any Human Friend, the follow up to I’m Not Your Man and, if its lead single “i’m not where you are” is anything to go by, a record just as brazen as its predecessor. “i’m not where you are” is one of Hackman’s most darkly-toned tracks yet: an ode to emotional unavailability delivered with Hackman’s typically smooth hypnotic, vocals. “I’ve been trying to find the point in human contact,” Hackman sings over crunchy guitars and bright synths, before shrugging the whole thing off entirely: “I get bored like that.” (see video premiere May 21st).”

Marika Hackman Tour Dates

Marika Hackman international tour schedule in support of Any Human Friend begins for 2019 spans September 21st in Bristol, UK at Thekla and ends November 6th in West Hollywood, CA at The Roxy Theatre. Preceding the headlining fall dates are two UK festival appearances: June 1st at London’s All Points East and August 15th at Green Man Festival.

Jun. 01 - London, UK - All Points East
Aug.15 - Beacon Breacons, UK - Green Man Festival
Sep. 21 - Bristol, UK - Thekla
Sep. 23  - Glasgow, UK - Oran Mor
Sep. 24 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
Sep. 25 - Manchester, UK - Band On The Wall 
Sep. 26 - London, UK - Islington Assembly Hall
Oct. 11 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
Oct. 12 - Durham, NC - The Pinhook
Oct. 13 - Washington, DC - U Street Music Hall
Oct. 14 - Philadelphia, PA - Boot & Saddle
Oct. 15 - Brooklyn, NY - Elsewhere
Oct. 18 - Allston, MA - Great Scott
Oct. 19 - Portland, ME - Port City Music Hall
Oct. 20 - Montréal, QC - Bar Le ‘Ritz’ P.D.B.
Oct. 21  - Toronto, ON - The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
Oct. 23 - Columbus, OH - Ace of Cups
Oct. 24 - Ann Arbor, MI - Blind Pig
Oct. 25 - Chicago, IL - Sleeping Village
Oct. 26 - Milwaukee, WI - Back Room at Colectivo Coffee
Oct. 28 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th St. Entry
Nov. 01 - Seattle, WA - Neumos
Nov. 04 - Oakland, CA - Starline Social Club
Nov. 06 - West Hollywood, CA - The Roxy Theatre

Any Human Friend

Any Human Friend was co-produced by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The xx, Let’s Eat Grandma) and Marika herself, and shows off a sharper and more liberated sound than ever before. Now available for preorder from Sub Pop: LP preorders through megamart.subpop.com and select independent retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on Salmon-colored vinyl (while supplies last). There will also be a new t-shirt design available.

Cover art photography by Joost Vandebrug, inspired by Rineke Dijkstra (see “More on…” below).

Any Human Friend
Tracklisting:
 
1. wanderlust
2. the one
3. all night
4. blow
5. i’m not where you are
6. send my love
7. hand solo
8. conventional ride
9. come undone
10. hold on
11. any human friend

More on Marika Hackman’s Any Human Friend:
“hand solo,” “blow,” “conventional ride”—these are just a few of the cheeky offerings off Any Human Friend, the new album from rock provocateur Marika Hackman. “This whole record is me diving into myself and peeling back the skin further and further, exposing myself in quite a big way. It can be quite sexual,” Hackman says. “It’s blunt, but not offensive. It’s mischievous.” There’s also depth to her carnal knowledge: Any Human Friend (August 9th from Sub Pop Records in North and South America and AMF for the rest of the world) is ultimately about how, as she puts it, “We all have this lightness and darkness in us.” 

Hackman lifted the album’s title from a documentary about four-year-olds interacting with dementia patients in senior homes. At one point, two little girls confer about their experience there, with one musing on how it’s great to make “any human friend,” whether old or young. “When she said that it really touched a nerve in me,” says the London-based musician. “It’s that childlike view where we really accept people, are comfortable with their differences.” 

Such introspection has earned Hackman her name. Her folkie 2015 debut, We Slept at Last, was heralded for being nuanced and atmospheric. She really found her footing with her last release, I’m Not Your Man—which earned raves from The Guardian, Stereogum, and Pitchfork—and its sybaritic, swaggering hit “Boyfriend,” which boasts of seducing away a straight guy’s girlfriend. “Her tactile lyrics keep the songs melodically strong and full of surprises,” remarkedPitchfork. We’ll say! 

“I’m a hopeless romantic,” she explains. “I search for love and sexual experience, but also I’m terrified by it.” Hackman is a Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey for the inclusive generation: unbounded by musical genre, a preternatural lyricist and tunesmith who isn’t afraid to go there. (Even her cover art, which finds Hackman nearly nude while cradling a baby pig, is a nod to Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra’s unfiltered photos of mothers just after they gave birth.) To that end, “hand solo” extolls the virtues of masturbation and  features Hackman’s favorite line, “Under patriarchal law, I’m going to die a virgin.” The song “blow” paints a picture of social excess. And “conventional ride” thumbs its nose at heterosexual sex through “the trope a lot of gay women experience: sleeping with someone, then it becomes apparent you’re kind of an experiment.”

With Any Human Friend, boundaries are no longer an issue for her. “I sent ‘all night’ to my parents and they were quite shocked,” she says of the paean to the flesh, dressed as a sweetly harmonic track. “Why does it sound shocking coming out of my mouth? Women have sex with each other, and it seems to me we aren’t as freely allowed to discuss that as men are. But at no point am I disrespecting the women I’m having sex with. It can be fucking sexy without banging people over the head with a frying pan. It’s sexy sex.”

Sharing intimacies with her parents sorta makes sense when you consider she wrote “the one”—a portrait of the artist amid identity crisis—and several other songs in her bedroom at their house, where she crashed after a painful break-up with a longtime girlfriend. “‘send my love’ is a proper breakup song,” she says of the levitating, string-laden track. “I actually wrote that in a moment of grief. It’s a strange take on it because I’m imagining myself as my ex-girlfriend.” She penned its companion track, “i’m not where you are,” a melodic earworm about emotional detachment from relationships, roughly six months later.

“I think because my life was flipped upside down, it was taking me longer to write,” she says. “This was definitely the hardest process I’ve gone through to make a record.” She wrote the album over a year, recording a few songs at a time with co-producer David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The xx). “I stopped being able to sleep properly,” she says. “I was waking up in the middle of the night to write songs.”

But the longer recording process also meant that Hackman had the time to experiment in the studio, especially with electronic songs. She was inspired by Wrench’s vast synth collection, many of which she used throughout Any Human Friend (“the synths give the album a nice shine”), notably on “hold on,” a deep dive into ennui expressed as ethereal R&B. She also switched up drum rhythms and wrote songs on the bass, such as the upbeat, idiosyncratic “come undone” (working name: “Funky Little Thang”).

Hackman bookends Any Human Friend with some of her most unexpected musical turns. The first song she wrote, “the one” (technically its second track), is “probably the poppiest song I’ve ever written,” she says. “It’s about that weird feeling of starting the process again from scratch.” To that end, it features a riot grrrl Greek chorus hurling such insults at her as, “You’re such an attention whore!” The title track closes out the album and explores how, “when we’re interacting with people, it’s like holding a mirror up to yourself.” It’s a weightless coda that’s jazz-like in its layering of rhythmic sounds as if you’re leisurely sorting through Hackman’s headspace.

“The drive to do all this is all just about trying to work out what the fuck is in my brain,” she says, laughing. The dragon she’s chasing is a rarified peace that materializes after properly tortured herself. “I really did have a good time working on this album,” she says, reassuringly. “It’s just emotionally draining to write music and constantly tap into your psyche. No musician is writing music for themselves to listen to. It’s a dialogue, a conversation, a connection. I’m creating something for people to react to.”