More about: Marika Hackman

Covers are often viewed as marmite within music. Weirdly enough, people do get sick of artists slowing down a track, adding a simple chord progression and labelling it as a “new spin on a timeless classic”. There’s always been a stigma surrounding them, and if anyone was going to remove that stigma, it was going to be Marika Hackman. After twining a few covers with her original compositions during live sets, Hackman has now compiled them into a unique and beautifully haunting self-produced LP, creating covers so fresh and well suited to her voice that, without prior knowledge, they could be mistaken for originals.

Since her latest album Any Human Friend, a buoyant, guitar-centric record, Hackman has switched direction. Covers is a lot more brooding than work from previous years, with Hackman herself stating this album is a means to “explore new sound ideas”. Having said that, inn tone and style, Covers is incredibly similar to her debut We Slept At Last, with more pensive and melancholic notes taking the place of more optimistic melodies.

Straight away we’re thrust into a sombre soundscape as Hackman covers the Radiohead B-side ‘You Never Wash Up After Yourself’; a track penned by Thom Yorke about his ex-wife. Impeccable vocal layering as well as the unusual sensation of flies buzzing around your head make this tune a remarkably unique listen. The original's simplistic picking progression has been swapped out for daunting synths that fill out the tracks otherwise haunting emptiness.

On ‘Phantom Limb’, a cover of The Shins classic, Hackman swaps bells for cymbals and chords for mellow lo-fi plucking, creating a picturesque and icy landscape, perfect for the incoming winter.

‘Realti’ (originally by Grimes) is a much more subdued version of the original, with elements of the obscure delicately nestled in between the notes. Although slower and, quite honestly, less weird, it still manages to capture the track's signature unearthliness. Backing vocals heavy with disorientating effects and synths that sound like the screams of deep space set this track apart in a way that makes it, quite frankly, better than the original or at the very least, beyond comparison.

Throughout the rest of the album we’re treated to ghostly spins on heart wrenching indie (‘Between The Bars’), masterfully produced takes on synth-pop (‘Pink Light’) and eons of lucious layering (‘Playground Love’).  It’s an album that captures all there is to love about covers. That being: a uniqueness required to elevate the songs from simply those of another artist.

Covers is a magnificent experiment, filled with a mellifluous melancholy, bittersweet on the ears. It displays Hackman’s incredible prowess as not only a musician but also a producer. With this album she has reset the entire genre of covers, showing that they can be elegant and well-thought out pieces of music, opposed to a whiny guy playing ‘Wonderwall’ at a houseparty.

Covers arrives 13 November.

More about: Marika Hackman