For the emotionally deadpan: Marika Hackman's 'i'm not where you are'

Marika Hackman releases ode to being unavailable 'i'm not where you are' and announces new album for release this summer.

On 2017’s I’m Not Your Man, Marika Hackman ditched her delicately dark metaphors to sing very brazenly of sleeping with someone else’s girlfriend. Shirking off the ‘twee-folk songstress’ label slapped onto her first album, her scuzzy indie-rock swaggered with the perfect balance of coy and cocky. Cut from the same grungy cloth, her new single ‘i’m not where you are’ came out of nowhere last month, shortly before the London-based musician teased her third album by announcing its initials in a wry, hangman-like fashion on Twitter.

Now fully fleshed out by the full announcement, Any Human Friend is to arrive this August, but already leaves its bite with the bitterly unsweet music video for ‘i’m not where you are’. Propping up the track in all its emotionless glory, a vacant and stony-faced Hackman acts the epitome of emotional unavailability while various and insignificant lovers vie unsuccessfully for her attention. Slaps are thrown, as are glasses of tomato juice, and bras out of windows.

Still, Hackman is unfazed. “I've been trying to find the point in human contact/ I get bored like that,” she drawls over bright and crunchy synth hooks, a token of the slicker, pop-ish production she sought and promised on the forthcoming album. Working alongside David Wrench on this, there’s an unsettled hum about ‘i’m not where you are’ that cracks through the sardonic exterior. Despite the glaze over Hackman’s eyes, the track buzzes with a restless and infectious energy owed to feeling unfulfilled. If ever there was an anthem to snap back the emotionally elsewhere, this could be it.

Any Human Friend is out August 9th via Sub Pop and AMF.

By Addison Paterson