MARIKA HACKMAN Shares New Single 'No Caffeine'

Breathe in, count to ten, and breathe out. Marika Hackman is back. 

Four years after her last studio album, Any Human Friend - a critically acclaimed celebration of sexy fun and visceral, rank hotness - Marika Hackman returns today with a remarkable new single entitled “No Caffeine,” her first for Chrysalis Records.

“No Caffeine” finds Marika in fetal position, rattling off tactics to prevent a panic attack while likening her anxiety to an abusive partner. The impeccably self-produced song finds Marika performing every instrument – house-of-horrors piano included – save for the brass and strings. The song has additional production from Sam Petts-Davies (Thom Yorke, Warpaint) and long-term collaborator Charlie Andrew (Alt-J). 

Listen to the song now, and watch its music video which Marika co-directed with Natàlia Pagès:

“No Caffeine” scans as a fevered list of the preventative tools Marika uses to avoid a panic attack. Thrusting the listener into the eye of the anxiety storm, Marika suggests:  “Occupy your mind / Don’t stay home / Talk to all your friends, but don't look at your phone / Scream into a bag / Try to turn your brain off.” On “No Caffeine”, Marika lives in the rub of industrial and pastoral, exploring the innocence of childhood versus the gnarly realities of adulthood.

At the start of 2020, Marika hurtled into lockdown; stifled and isolated, her musical brain nullified. She had been in a constant cycle of write/record/press/tour for nine years, since the age of nineteen, and the eerie silence of stopping was agonising. Being with friends, swimming, collaborating and touring, everything Marika normally used to distract her mind from spiralling thoughts and feelings had disappeared.

She stopped writing songs. As the months progressed, she accrued scraps of melodies but never felt that spectral hit of a fully formed song arriving in her brain. However, Marika’s never-ending pursuit of untangling her internal universe via music would eventually allow her to find her way back to the golden orb of creativity, trapped within a massive block of ice that had built up over the months of her writer's block. 

Observant fans of Marika’s will have noticed murmurs of new music over the last few weeks, sonic snippets shared and news of an intimate, sold-out London show happening tonight hinting there could be more to come from Marika very soon. Now exhale. 

Photo by Steve Gullick