Marika Hackman drops bodies at The Sinclair on Saturday, 7 September 2024.

Art School Girlfriend does double duty in the opening slot and fill-in bassist for headliner.

The booker behind the local live music series Illegally Blind (puts together the Fuzzstival and more), Jason Trefts, is raising money to start a non-profit organization, staffed by brain tumor survivors, “that will provide free short-term care coordination services for people in the Boston, MA area recently diagnosed with a brain tumor.”

The mission of the project hits close to home for Trefts. In his own words, “I was diagnosed with an incurable Astrocytoma at 24 years old. I have spent the decade-plus since navigating chronic disabling conditions while working in the human services field.”

“Astrocytoma” is a type of brain tumor. And while Trefts has been dealing with that, he has also been working in care coordination himself, observing first hand how important the work is. His proposed non-profit would make more of that important work happen for more people. Find out the details and donate at the Still Around Gofundme.

Lots of perfume and cologne at this Sinclair show. Is Art School Girlfriend x Marika Hackman a sneaky “date night” kind of thing. Or swinger central?

Most of the attention and adoration was forward-facing, though, directed towards the stage with such rapt intensity the opener ASG remarked that she didn’t usually receive that kind of treatment at London shows. You know, there’s a lot more jibber jabber in an English club. And maybe there will be more jibber jabber at other American dates on Hackman/ASG’s North American Tour…

But here in Boston? This crowd was super focused – so focused that you’ve got to wonder whether the medical emergency later in the evening was one of those psychosomatic conditions they’re always talking about in medical dramas.

Psychological states can induce certain physical responses in the human body. The music of Art School Girlfriend, a kind of gauzy chill beatz ambient electro played up to the sadcore journalers in the crowd. Extra points for the extra clubby grime in the ambient textures.

What psychological state did it induce in the crowd? Not sure. But the artist announced to the room “Things are about to get sad. You're at a Marika Hackman concert, this is what you want” and it elicited one of those ubiquitous and all-purpose “Whoo!”s that serve as the universal indicator that something, somewhere, somehow has been ‘apprishiated’ at a concert.

Her new album Soft Landing is out now. You can buy it as a bundle, and some bundles include album-branded socks. Marika Hackman was selling album-branded socks as well. Is that a European thing? The only American musician I’ve seen sell socks is Yoke Lore, but maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places.

I’m going to pull this writeup from my Cambridge Day gig, which you’re allowed to do when you get paid as little as I do. Weep for me! Not posted at Cambridge’s paper of record yet, as far as I know.

English alt popper Marika Hackman landed at The Sinclair last Saturday on the front end of a tour promoting her latest album BIG SIGH, a soundtrack that dwells on heartache in search of cathartic relief.

Seems melancholy, and maybe the songs trend a bit on the sad side, but the real downer of the night was the US government, which failed to issue the requisite visas to allow the rest of Hackman’s band to join her stateside. Somewhere across the Atlantic there was at least one bassist and one guitarist making frantic phone calls to no avail.

Hackman kept calm and carried on (nailed it!) with a stand-in version of her full band, including opener Art School Girlfriend helping out on bass. The set also included a healthy serving of solo acoustic numbers, which reached back to her early material to the obvious pleasure of stalwart and longtime fans.

Judging by the puppy dog eyes and respectful hush in the room, there was little that could go wrong, in any conventional sense, to upset the tender memories being formed in real time. It was a night to launch a thousand journal entries.

Not even a medical emergency in the pit could dampen the mood. Pro tip: if you’re going to have an epileptic seizure, or some sort of fainting fit, you could pick a lot worse place than a Marika Hackman show at The Sinclair. Immediately, an ample margin of breathing room opened up around the victim as house staff swooped in to save the day.

Sources report that the victim was OK, but what’s an artist to know or do about it in the middle of a set?

There is a fine art to smoothing over the rough, ragged edges of a live event that belongs to skilled performers. It’s an art tantamount to mind control, which permits the artist to pull a crowd, which has been taken out of the moment by, say, a medical fit, a violent outburst, or a 30-minute tech delay, back into the Dionysian space of musical communion.

Every artist pulls off the trick in their own way, and the techniques can vary according to cultural norms. Hackman, perhaps embodying a little bit of the British stiff upper lip, made the necessary gestures of human sympathy for the fallen and got on with the set.

Which, you know, is preferable in a lot of ways to the American-style of hyper performative empathy. An American artist would have made the incident the centerpiece of the set, stage bantered about it endlessly, and communicated a wellness helpline for fans at the end of the night.

Stay hydrated, bitches!

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