Edinburgh’s Hamish Hawk returns today with the news of his signing to So Recordings and that a new album “A Firmer Hand” will follow on August 16th.
Hamish also shares the first single from the record in the form of the playful, propulsive and searingly honest “Big Cat Tattoos”. It’s one that Hamish had the following to say for:
“Big Cat Tattoos is just one of the great unsaids that make up the new record, and it’s the birthplace of the album’s title: A Firmer Hand. Unknowingly I’d been building up an ugly arsenal of great unsaids over the past few years, and the album became a place I could offload them, and with any luck put them to rest.
I tried to avoid cleaning things up at the time of writing, I cornered myself into a warts-and-all approach. But don’t be fooled, Big Cat Tattoos is all talk. Our hero gets a few barbs in nice and early, and lands a couple of clumsy jabs, but in the end we’re witness to nothing more than a petty diatribe. It’s embittered, unbecoming and wholly embarrassing. It does have a certain get-up-and-go, though.”
LISTEN TO “BIG CAT TATTOOS” HERE
PRE-ORDER “A FIRMER HAND” HERE
Hawk’s new album follows 2021’s breakthrough LP “Heavy Elevator” and 2023’s critically-acclaimed “Angel Numbers”, both sublime and literate records that saw significant plaudits at both press and radio, including – no mean feat for an artist previously self-releasing in the current climate – six singles playlisted at BBC 6 Music.
Of his new album, Hamish says: “Writing this album, I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out. The thing that links all of the songs is a sense of the unsaid, whether out of guilt, shame, repression, embarrassment, coyness, whatever it might have been. I realised: I am going to say these things, and not all of them are going to make me look good. The album made so many demands, and I just gave myself over to it.”
“Once I’d given myself over to the idea, I thought, I have to stick to this. I can’t hide anything from it. I can’t clean it all up for consumption. It felt uncomfortable for me – and that’s exactly how it should feel. That’s a really strong position.”
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