Hamish Hawk

A Firmer Hand is the third in a run of superlative Hamish Hawk albums which began in 2021 with Heavy Elevator, and continued last year with Angel Numbers. Hawk has been making music with serious intent since 2014, when he self-released Aznavour as Hamish James Hawk. Championed early on by King Creosote and Idlewild, the following year he recorded the 10-inch Mull EP before forming Hamish Hawk & The New Outfit, a unit which morphed into his current band.

“Writing this album, I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out.” In a café just around the corner from his Edinburgh flat, Hamish Hawk is contemplating his extraordinary new record, A Firmer Hand. “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.”