Hamish Hawk signs to SO Recordings and announces forthcoming album, A Firmer Hand
Edinburgh's Hamish Hawk has returned to announce his signing to So Recordings alongside sharing "Big Cat Tattoos" as the lead single from his forthcoming album, A Firmer Hand.
""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," he says of the single.
"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."
Hawk's new album follows 2021's debut album, Heavy Elevator, and 2023's critically-acclaimed, Angel Numbers. “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," he explains.
"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.”
Tracklist:
- Juliet as Epithet
- Machiavelli's Room
- Big Cat Tattoos
- Nancy Dearest
- Autobiography of Spy
- You Can Film Me
- Christopher St.
- Men Like Wire
- Questionable Hit
- Disingenuous
- Milk an Ending
- The Hard Won
A Firmer Hand is set for release on 16 August via So Recordings, and is available to pre-order.
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