Hamish Hawk: A Firmer Hand
Vinyl | CD | Cassette | Digital
Available 16th August 2024
Hamish Hawk’s A Firmer Hand is a brave, fully formed, and wholly successful artistic statement.
A Firmer Hand is Hamish Hawk’s third album. Both of the preceding albums, Heavy Elevator and Angel Numbers, have been justly praised. The albums have a flair for distinctive and compelling musical and vocal arrangements, within which a completely engaging talent for evocative words is enabled to take flight. Live Hamish has a dynamic presence and authenticity that makes each performance an unforgettable experience, leading to him playing to larger and larger audiences.
It goes without saying therefore, that expectations will be high for this new album. Against this background, what feels remarkable about this album, is that Hamish hasn’t played safe and continued in the path suggested by the first two albums. On A Firmer Hand, he has chosen to try new voices and share with us a deeply personal insight into his own history, concerns and tensions, and relational transactions. Added to this is a widening of the musical palette on which Hamish and his excellent band draw on. This then is a brave album, and one which for this reviewer triumphantly succeeds on every level.
So, to the album, which opens with Juliet as Epithet. With an almost ambient musical delivery, the song is imbued with keyboard-based washes of sound. It is an atmospheric opening to the album, with poignant, wistful lyrics evoking lost relationships and endings, delivered by Hamish in a soft, sad, and very moving voice.
Machiavelli’s Room follows and can be seen as the pivotal song that heralds the albums risk taking approach. Musically we get a striking combination of rhythmic keyboards and crashing guitar, driven by Stefan Maurice’s expert, precision, and ringing drum patterns. Hamish’s vocal skillfully follows the contours of the band’s playing, and provides a reflective narrative tone, that brings the listener directly into a torrent of very personal emotions and feelings. It is in some ways very confessional and certainly bears witness to the growing maturity of Hamish’s writing.
A deep breath and into third song, Big Cat Tattoos. It is a song with an irresistible funk beat, led by Alex Duthie’s walking bass line. Andrew Pearson offers up some stinging guitar parts that serve to accentuate Hamish’s acerbic treatise on alpha like attitudes and what they might be covering over. The following mid-song stanza gets to the heart of things:
“You with all the modesty of Big Tech in boom
I tire of you honestly when you swan around a room
How I used to like to watch you fixing me a drink
‘til manhandling the crystal ware became your kink”
All told this is a manifestly killer opening trio of songs.
Moving through to the middle section of the album, there are a number of songs to draw the listeners attention too. With Autobiography of Spy there is musical resonance of legendary New York artists Lou Reed and Television. Over which Hamish creates a film noir like setting in his words, translating into a reflection on the experience of hiding parts of yourself from the gaze of others. The song has a very strong vocal performance, where every word is made to count, within a poetical rhythm.
You Can Film Me is a melee of post punk sound, with ringing guitars and psychedelic organ. It is a song where Hamish combines a somewhat sorrowful refection on the nature of fame and loss with a touching empathy for the protagonist of the song. Christopher St. in contrast is mainly just voice and piano. This shorter piece (just around ninety seconds) has a very affecting fragility and vulnerability that washes over the listener in the most affecting of ways.
Questionable Hit seems to speak to the pressures that can face an artist, to produce something that will fit current trends. It brings a new voice to the fore, that demonstrates Hamish’s vocal development. It’s a softer, interpretative vocal that allows the melody in the words to rise and gently fall. This is complemented by an understated groove that the band perfectly lock into.
The two songs that bring the album to a conclusion perhaps set out some interesting future directions that Hamish might chose to explore further. Milk an Ending has Hamish intriguingly venturing into the space of a post punk Scott Walker. Milk an Ending is a song both languid and edgy with a quite simply outstanding and impactful vocal by Hamish. Andrew Pearson is all over the song with some cuttingly atmospheric guitar work. The Hard Won takes the album into experimental mode. As a repeating keyboard motif gives the song an electronic cadence, developed further by the other worldly harmony vocals, and country and western style guitar interludes. It is a fitting nonlinear musical context for Hamish to take us on a journey through his parts of self, in a vocal that is both gentle and understanding.
A Firmer Hand is an album with artistic vision and integrity, that provides music and words with real depth and honesty, that invite the listener to engage with the album in a way that will resonate with their own experiences, thoughts and feelings. It is a brave, fully formed, and wholly successful artistic statement. It deserves to do very well indeed.
Hamish will be touring the album right through to the end of year, including a support spot on the Travis tour. More details are available from the links below.
Louder Than War interviewed Hamish about the new album, playing live and other areas of interest. It was a fascinating interview and will appear soon.
You can view here the official music video for Big Cat Tattoos
here:
You can find more about Hamish Hawk here:
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