Marika Hackman, Bill Ryder-Jones — and the best new releases

Big Sigh
★★★★
Chrysalis
On her fifth album, the Hampshire singer further develops her ear for detail and dynamics. Meaty topics — sex and sexuality, autonomy v intimacy, openness v guardedness — are confronted or alluded to with sly humour and unapologetic savagery, the lyrics often leaping out at you from the swirling musical mists that Hackman and her longtime collaborator, Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Wolf Alice et al), concoct. “My heart won’t grow with your fingers down my throat,” she sings on the somnolent, Elliott Smith-like Hanging, while Vitamins, whose up-close harmonies recall those on Hackman’s haunting early song Tongues, opens with a verse that stops you in your tracks. If layered folktronica and sonorous piano are the album’s sonic defaults, there