''Any Human Friend'' is the third full-length studio album by English musician

Marika Hackman Marika Louise Hackman (born 17 February 1992) is an English vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. She is considered to fall within the alternative and English-folk genres, and is noted for her dark, melancholic lyrics. Hackman has re ...

. It was released on 9 August 2019 by AMF Records,

Virgin EMI Records Virgin EMI Records was a British record label owned by the Universal Music Group that was formed in 2013. In June 2020, the label was rebranded as EMI Records, and operates Virgin Records as an imprint of the new EMI Records. History Virgin ...

and

Sub Pop Sub Pop is a record label founded in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop achieved fame in the early 1990s for signing Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, central players in the grunge movement. They are often ...

Critical reception

''Any Human Friend'' received positive reviews from critics upon its release. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 84, based on 15 reviews. Aimee Cliff of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' praised the album, giving it a perfect score. In her review for ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', Alexandra Pollard called ''Any Human Friend'' "a blunt, bold album on which Hackman's beatific voice sits atop methodically messy instrumentals." Clare Martin of '' Paste'' gave the album a 9.3 out of 10, calling it "a treasure trove of zippy guitar hooks, glimmering synths and lemony vocals expertly curated by Hackman." Writing for ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...

'', Chris Ingalls called it "a quantum leap forward for Hackman, as the more fully-formed, full-band arrangements add a welcome element to her sharp lyrical content. The music is biting and arresting yet never manages to distract from what she's singing about. Rather, it creates new and exciting dimensions to what would have probably been great songs even with simple acoustic guitar accompaniment."

Track listing

Notes *All track titles are stylised in

all lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes. Musicians *

– vocals , guitar , bass guitar , synthesizer , piano , bells , drums , string arrangement * David Wrench – percussion , Hammond organ , tambourine , theremin * Jessica Batour – drums * Gillian Maguire – viola , violin Technical * Marika Hackman – production , mixing , recording engineering * David Wrench – production , mixing , recording engineering * Grace Banks – recording engineering *

Matt Colton Matt Colton (born 30 March 1975) is an English mastering engineer and member of the mastering group of the Music Producers Guild. He has mastered recordings for artists such as Muse, Coldplay, James Blake, George Michael, Hot Chip, Gary Num ...

– mastering Packaging *

Joost Vandebrug Joost Vandebrug (born 24 June 1982) is a Dutch artist working across photography and film. Life and work Vandebrug studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Vandebrug's photo-based works include both conventional and unconvention ...

– cover photography * Bridget Beorse – design * Dusty Summers – design

Charts

References

{{Authority control 2019 albums Marika Hackman albums AMF Records albums Virgin EMI Records albums Sub Pop albums