Photo: Gigwise
What better way to end the inaugural week of Gigwise's Office Sessions than with the ominous beauty of Marika Hackman's 'Animal Fear'?
Watch Marika Hackman perform 'Animal Fear' for Gigwise's Office Sessions below
One of the highlights from her 2015 debut album, We Slept At Last, Hackman performed a stripped-back, haunting rendition of 'Animal Fear' - and, unusually for the hectic Gigwise office, you could have heard a pin drop.
We were pretty relieved, too, that she didn't turn into a werewolf mid-song, as is the case in the song's brilliant, low budget video (which features a brief, bloody and ill-fated cameo from Laura Marling).
Watch Marika Hackman perform 'Animal Fear' for Gigwise's Office Sessions below
Gigwise: Is it fair to say your lyrics are slightly sweet and slightly sinister?
Hackman: "Yeah, I think so. I almost feel like sometimes it's a criticism when people say they're very dark. It feels slightly insulting because I don't want to be all doom and gloom, and actually I think there's a lot of hope in the lyrics, and there's playfulness and wordplay and things like that. I like it when people pick up on those things rather than just saying it's a very heavy record."
But sometimes things are too sweet, and it's nice to have that sinister edge.
"Yeah you don't want it to be too saccharin! I definitely like to play with that sinister edge, and it's something that I tend to admire. I don't really like listening to very sweet music."
Do you draw from literature and mythology a lot for your lyrics?
"Definitely. When I was writing the last record, which feels like a long time ago now, I didn't realise as I writing, but I was reading Ovid's Metamorphoses throughout a lot of that process - it's a big old book! It's all about changing and transformation, and those themes are all over the record. There's references to Robert Frost in there, there's references to Shakespeare... I've always loved reading. Both me and my brother were complete bookworms. One of my grandmothers is a poet and writes stories, so everything's floating around in our family!
We Slept At Last by Marika Hackman is out now.
For more information on Marika Hackman, find her on:
Facebook
Twitter
Official Website
