Marika Hackman is the type of musician fueled by contradictions. On her third studio album, August's Any Human Friend, she embraces those contradictions as they exist within herself, her relationships, and in the broader culture — with shimmering indie-pop songs which depart from her folksier, atmospheric roots.

In Hackman's words, Any Human Friend is an "exploration of myself and all realms of where your brain goes by purely just existing. [Emotions] nestle up side-by-side with each other. And that's kind of fine. It's interesting, maybe, rather than scary."

The English vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter stopped by The Current before her 7th St. Entry performance last month to talk about relationships, ego control, and how queer performers are shifting the music industry among other things. Click the audio player to hear our full conversation or read the edited transcript below.

You've said that the process behind Any Human Friend was the hardest that you've ever gone through in terms of making music -- can you talk about why?

I think there were lots of reasons building up as to why it was the hardest. I'd just come out of a very long-term relationship where we were living together and I had to move out and be in the world again — which [was] a useful thing because that's a lot about what the record is. That kind of readjustment whilst also trying to be creative and motivate yourself is quite difficult.

In terms of writing three songs here, three songs there, and going into the studio and recording in bits rather than [having] a chunk of time where you focus on the whole record — it's very draining because you can't really turn your head off. I can't say, "I've written an album and now I'm going to go into the studio and record that." It's a very different mental process and for a year and a half I was in the mindset that I should be constantly writing because I had to be. I got really, really tired and couldn't switch my head off. About a year into it, it was starting to really affect my mental health. I was shaky at best most of the time. So yeah, it was a taxing process but annoyingly I think it's produced my best record. So it's frustrating to think I might have to do it all again that way.

On the album there are songs about feeling numb and emotionally detached in relationships sandwiched between odes to physical pleasure. Do those things seem at odds to you?

Yeah I think something I'm trying to work out about myself is this kind of fear of giving myself wholly to someone in an emotional way mixed with sexual desire and a craving for physical intimacy in all kinds of forms. It's something that I find really difficult in my own head because those two things existing side-by-side — I mean how the hell are you going to navigate that situation? It's kind of impossible and I think it's been the basis for my relationships breaking down in whatever capacity, whether it was just a fling or a long-term thing. I'm fascinated by that as a human I have those two emotions running in tandem.

I guess the record [is] an exploration of myself and all realms of where your brain goes by purely just existing. They nestle up side-by-side with each other. And that's kind of fine. It's interesting, maybe, rather than scary. I've just got to work out how to align them I suppose.

I wanted to talk to you about the video for "Boyfriend." There's a trend among openly queer performers to subvert the classic boyband mystique — which you do exceptionally well in that video — how did you conceptualize the video, and do you think the music industry is selling sex differently these days?

I think when I was coming up with that theme and the idea for that video I didn't want to just narrate what the song was saying the whole way through, which would be like a weird little romcom situation with me stealing someone's girlfriend or whatever, so I kind of wanted to take the narrative there and expand it to be more about being a woman and that idea that we're all playing back stage, playing the real music, but we've got these sweet looking dudes out front who don't really know what they're doing but the crowd are all going wild for them.

There's a frustration or a struggle to have your voice heard as a woman, or there has been. I think it is changing, and I think in terms of how sex is being sold there's still quite a sort of archaic way of selling sex that is happening more in the pop world, but now shuffling up alongside it there's like this new empowered sexual freedom that I'm seeing particularly with queer women and that's within the pop realm as well, which is great. I feel like that's a very strong and unique voice and I think because it's unique, it is being heard finally and it is a great way for us to express ourselves and be seen without being controlled or put in a box by the male gaze, which is a positive. With any of these things there is still a long way to go but I think we're on the right track.

With the "Boyfriend" video we made that two years ago and even in that time I feel like it's shifted, hence why [on] Any Human Friend that voice has expanded and it's louder and stronger and more bold. I felt more comfortable to make [the album] because of a personal shift, which is because of a wider shift.

The song "the one" is the second track on the album, and it sounds like a clear departure sonically from your earlier work and the [preceding] song. I read that it has a lot to do with a frustration that you have with the music industry, with other things in your life — can you talk about the process behind that song in particular?

When I have emotions about things and I can't work out how I'm feeling, if I write a song it almost puts it into like an object form and I can look at it and analyze it and maybe understand a bit more about my own brain. It kind of makes it a tangible thing, it makes it easier to deal with and it means you can kind of put it somewhere. Within that song I have also created another character to make my feelings of disappointment or frustration with myself easier.

It's something I could laugh at and be tongue and cheek and put it out like I'm saying 'yes this is a part of me but I think it's ridiculous.' And I've inflated it so much that it becomes an object of ridicule and that makes it easier. I'm owning it and I'm making fun of myself and that's always much easier to do than having someone call out a truth about you and mock it.

I created this character [that says] "I've ruined my career because I wrote too many sad songs and I'm not as successful as I thought I should have been when I was like 19 and that's definitely because of writing really moody music. Actually, I'm a rock star now and everyone loves me." And none of that is true at all, but there are seeds of doubt that happen along the way in the last eight years where I'm kind of like, "Maybe I should be here or there," and people are telling me, "You need to write songs more like this or do it like that," and it's kind of like taking all of that and being like, "Actually I'm going to write a really fun pop song."

Do you see [songs] as works in progress even after they've come out, do you enjoy revisiting songs, or do you try to distance yourself from them once they're released?

When a song is done, for me, it's done. I never listen back to music I've written and released. I'm very good at letting go, I'm very good at the mixing process and not getting to fiddly. When you're in something very deep you can pick it apart forever if you want to and you have to understand that when someone is listening to something for the first time they're not going to be listening to it in the same way that you are. I like to let things go if I feel they're good enough. If they sound good, they're ready.

I think I'm very involved in the whole process from the beginning. I write all the parts, I do that on my own and in general play most of the parts on the record. With Any Human Friend I was co-producing so I was kind of along the way making those decisions and once they're done, they're done and they should be the right ones. So I try not to look back with regrets or anything like that.

It's funny you listen to an album that you've written; you listen to the demos, you play them over and over again, you listen to the mixes. It's just constant over a year of listening to this one record so generally when it comes out I'm kinda done and it's not a case of being like, "I never want to hear it again," [...] it's kind of just like it belongs to everyone else now, you know. I've had it, I've kept it with me, we've lived together, and now it's in the world. And I'm more interested in how people are taking it. That then becomes the exciting thing, not the actual [music] itself.

Then when you're performing, do you feel like you have to go back and inhabit that earlier self? Is it taxing to have to go back and revisit [the record while performing]?

No it's enjoyable and I think with a new record as well you have to work out how to play it and get it across live. I try not to replicate records when I play shows. I think that's kind of pointless. Anyone can listen to the album whenever they want. So I like to play around with how things sound and push in different directions and the difference with performing is that it's the most conversational part of what I do. I spend years on my own writing with no one else there and only sending it off to a select group of people and I'm writing about themes that are to me like an open conversation, I want to have feedback from [the audience] and get people responding to it. When I play the songs in a room full of people I can see their response. I can talk to them afterwards. We're all engaged in a moment together experiencing the same thing and that's the closest I can get to having a conversation.

Can you talk about the album's title and cover? The inspiration behind each one is different, but I can sense some overlap.

I was watching a documentary with my friend about four-year-olds put into elderly care homes with people with dementia and Alzheimer's and people with degenerative brain diseases with the idea that having the kids around would fuel the kids to come out of their shells — it was a social experiment basically. [In the documentary] these two little girls are talking to each other and one of them says, "Have you made any friend this week?" And the other one says, "Yeah I've made loads of friends," and her friend says "Oh, even the old people?" And she turns around and says, "Yeah, any human friend." And I thought, as a statement, and especially out of the mouth of a child, it's so pure; it's such a simple statement [and] it's in a kind of wording that [adults] wouldn't use. It's so simple in its essence.

As you get older, the idea of a human kind of disappears; we're not all the same animal anymore. We have perceived identities and things that we judge each other for before we even met each other. We all have context. We come from different places we all have different upbringings, there's so much backstory before you've even opened your mouth and had a conversation with somebody but you can sit there and judge. I think to distill that back to the idea that we are all humans and we are all capable of feeling all of these different things. And to except each other on that level and be kind to each other on the back of that was just something that I felt really resonated with me particularly whilst I was writing this record and it resonated with what I thought the record was about. That idea of shared emotional experience, no matter how ugly it seems, at its core it's something we're all capable of and that's something that should be accepted.

So then we move onto the image. The actual image itself was inspired by a Dutch photographer, she's called Rineke Dijkstra, and she did a series of mothers with their newborn babies just after they've given birth to them, which I saw when I was 16 and studying art. And they're very striking, they're very vulnerable but they're very, very strong because they are so vulnerable. These women have just gone through this huge ordeal. They're standing there with their babies across their breasts and they've got these hospital underwear on, and I've always found it very striking as a series of images. So I thought if I could recreate that with the idea of that exposed vulnerability being the strength behind the picture, so that's where we jump to me wearing these disgusting massive pants and being very naked. To stand like that, to be completely undone. There was no photoshop or anything else to make me look nice; that is me, that's how I look and I'm standing there and I'm saying, "Accept me. This is exactly who I am."

I'm holding a baby piglet instead of my newborn child because obviously I have no comprehension of motherhood apart from having my own mother. I used the piglet to represent the idea of judging something harshly before you understand it fully. Pigs are really fascinating creatures, they're really intelligent, they're quite clean; I used to have pigs and witnessed this firsthand, and they have a similar genetic build up to humans in their flesh. And "pig" is used as an insult. We treat them with derision; we're not kind to pigs and so there's all these labels associated with pig but at their core they're very fascinating, wonderful creatures. So that's me taking a pig and saying, "I'm accepting you for what you are, I'm holding you here, we are the same. I'm standing here like this, I'm exposing myself, I'm accepting you." And it's kind of this thing of like inviting people it to be like, "Hey, it's okay to just be."

I often think about things I want to see more of, things I want to hear more of, whether that's my voice within the record talking about queer sexual experience as a woman. I would like to see more women who are unedited and have different shaped bodies feeling bold enough to just stand there and accept it. You can only get to that point if you see it enough, so I was just like, "I'll just do it then."