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Hamish Hawk SO Recordings

Hamish Hawk signs to SO Recordings and announces forthcoming album, A Firmer Hand

30 April 2024, 10:53 | Written by Tyler Damara Kelly

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:

  1. Juliet as Epithet
  2. Machiavelli's Room
  3. Big Cat Tattoos
  4. Nancy Dearest
  5. Autobiography of Spy
  6. You Can Film Me
  7. Christopher St.
  8. Men Like Wire
  9. Questionable Hit
  10. Disingenuous
  11. Milk an Ending
  12. 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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