Marika Hackman Announces ‘False Dogs’: A Raw and Tender Look at the Mid-Thirties Malaise
Marika Hackman has always possessed a rare gift: the ability to turn introspection into acoustic gravity. On her forthcoming fifth studio album, False Dogs, she leans deeper into that talent, using the album as a canvas for the tangled emotions of the mid-thirties — that strange stretch of life where youth feels like a fading photograph, the future looms with equal parts promise and dread, and the present demands we make peace with who we are. The announcement came this week, wrapped in the bittersweet embrace of her new single, ‘33’, and alongside news of her biggest UK and European tour to date. With a release date of February 19 via Chrysalis Records, the album already feels like a milestone, both for Hackman and for the legions of listeners who have grown up alongside her music — first as a folk-leaning storyteller, then as a boldly confessional indie-rock force, and now as a woman navigating the curious, unsettling, and sometimes profoundly beautiful terrain that sits between the past and the future.
At its heart, False Dogs is about the beauty and anxiety of the mid-thirties malaise — that nebulous, often unspoken condition that settles in when your twenties have ended and the choices you’ve made begin to ossify into a life. Hackman does not shy away from this unease; instead, she wrestles with it, turning over memories like stones in a river, finding glints of nostalgia, flashes of doubt, and, ultimately, a stubborn hope. The album’s twelve songs are built from a period of experimentation at her East London studio, where she reportedly played nearly every instrument, from guitars and piano to drums, bass, mandolin, and synth. It’s a one-woman feat of meticulous craft, yet the sound feels surprisingly alive and collaborative — perhaps because she allowed the process to be exploratory, messy, and unplanned. The finishing touch came during a ten-day stint at Ramsgate’s Big Jelly Studios on the Kent coast. That shifting seaside light, the salt breeze, the quiet of a seaside town out of season — all of it seeps subtly into the record’s backdrop, lending an atmospheric layer that feels deeply fitting for an album concerned with nostalgia, growing up, and pushing through self-doubt to seek out a brighter horizon. Hackman herself acknowledges the shift: “I think this truly is the first record that I have fully inhabited my creative skin right up to its edges,” she shared, and one can almost hear the exhalation in that sentence — the sense that she has stopped trying to fit a mould and instead started to expand from within.
The first taster of this new world arrives in the form of ‘33’, the album’s opening track, which Hackman describes as grappling with “the dull ache of nostalgia, the apprehension of the future and the celebration of the moments in between.” It is a bittersweet single, tender and cutting in equal measure, and it tackles the very root of the album: the anxious itch we all feel when we look ahead to the unknown. The song traces the passage of time from seventeen years old — that age of first convictions and sleepover secrets — into the thirties, when the scaffolding of youth is stripped away and we are left to inspect the architecture of our lives. What makes the track particularly arresting is the inclusion of a children’s choir, whose bright, unvarnished voices float above the melancholy, reminding us that even as we age, there remains a child within, still asking questions, still hoping. The accompanying music video, created by JOFI Films, is equally evocative, weaving imagery that feels both personal and universal. The full tracklist for False Dogs is a journey in itself: from the matte-dark ‘Close To Me’ to the deceptively sunny ‘Hello Sunshine’, from the cryptic ‘Half Painted Dog’ (which lends its strangeness to the album title) to the surprisingly bold ‘Crimson’ — each title reads like a small confession, a fragment of mid-life diary that fans will surely be eager to decode.
To accompany the album reveal, Hackman has also announced the largest tour of her career, a sweep across the UK and Europe that demonstrates her growing reputation as a formidable live performer. The shows will kick off with a monumental headline date at London’s prestigious Royal Festival Hall on February 26, followed by UK stops in Bristol, Glasgow, and Manchester on March 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Then the tour hops over the Channel: Amsterdam’s Tolhuistuin on March 6, continuing through Brussels, Paris, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, and finally Stockholm on March 17. For fans, this is not just a tour announcement; it’s a promise of intimacy scaled up to grander rooms, an invitation to witness a songwriter who has always shared her most private feelings find an even larger communal space for them. Pre-sale tickets go live on October 22 at 10am BST, before the general on-sale opens the following day, October 23, also at 10am BST. Given the McClatchy of her past live performances — where she has been known to shift from fragile whisper to distorted roar in a single breath — these shows are likely to sell out quickly.
For those who have followed Hackman since the beginning, False Dogs represents a natural evolution from the emotional landslide of her fourth album, Big Sigh, which arrived in January 2024 to widespread critical acclaim. NME gave it four stars, writing: “The result is an excellent follow-up to the breakthrough that was ‘Any Human Friend’. Hackman raises the stakes in her music in a way that feels natural; it is conceptually bigger and more creatively mature, while the songcraft makes this transition feel earned. If ‘Any Human Friend’ was the rebound, ‘Big Sigh’ feels like the crash after the feelings you’ve been ignoring catch up to you — and it’s a defining moment for one of the UK’s most intriguing songwriters.” That review captured the arc of her career beautifully, and now False Dogs looks set to continue that trajectory — perhaps not a crash, but a more deliberate, unflinching walk through the middle-years fog. In the time between that album and this one, Hackman also released a new version of her song ‘Skin’ with a guest feature from Laura Marling, a name that feels like a musical soulmate. The original version appeared on her debut album, We Slept At Last, which dropped ten years ago — a decade of evolution, of redefining herself, of moving from folk-fringed beginnings to full-throated, genre-blurring expression. For fans, that decade has been a privilege to witness, and False Dogs promises to be another chapter in an ever-unfolding story.
As the announcement settles and the single loops on repeat, it’s impossible not to feel a swell of anticipation. Hackman has always written songs that are both personal and oddly universal — they make you feel seen in your most private moments, the ones you don’t share with friends or lovers. Her voice, sometimes honeyed, sometimes rough-hewn, carries a weight that suggests she has lived every syllable, and that truthfulness is what endears her to listeners who are themselves navigating the murky waters of adulthood. False Dogs is not just an album; it is a companion for the mid-thirties malaise, a hand on the shoulder in the dark, a whisper that says, “Keep pushing, it’s worth it.” That sentiment, so simply expressed, is perhaps the most human thing of all. In a world that often demands we present a polished, unbothered face, Hackman gives us permission to be messy, to feel the dull ache of the past, to flinch at the future, and to still find a sliver of brightness in the moments between. With its meticulously crafted instrumentation, its coastal atmosphere, its tender single, and its promise of live transcendence, False Dogs arrives as a testament to the creative maturation of one of our most intriguing artists — and a gentle reminder that growth, though often awkward, is always worth pushing through. As February approaches, fans old and new will be waiting, ears wide open, ready to inhabit that space with her — half-painted dogs on the threshold of something new, howling into the wind, but not entirely alone.