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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." Through the writing of "Machiavelli's Room", followed by
the arrival of songs such as "Milk an Ending" and "Juliet as Epithet", "A
Firmer Hand" came into focus as an album directed towards Hawk's
relationships with men: friends, lovers, family, colleagues. "I thought, this is
the body of the record. The fact that it makes me nervous tells me it was
the right thing to do."
It takes only a couple of listens to be sure that it was a risk worth taking.
And just a couple more to determine that "A Firmer Hand" is the best and
boldest record Hamish Hawk has delivered to date. "It's a bit of a coming of
age record," he says. And a record for the ages. Rich of voice and even
richer of imagination, Hawk creates musical pen-portraits, chamber pop
songs that have swallowed both a dictionary and a compendium of modern
urban (and island) fairy tales. And Hawk does all this with considerable wit,
inspired by artists like Leonard Cohen, Jarvis Cocker, Randy Newman and
Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. Hamish Hawk will be playing a number
of dates across the year in support of the new record, solo and with his
band, including a run of shows with Villagers and a recently announced
support for Elbow in the summer.