Edinburgh’s idiosyncratic musician and scribe, Hamish Hawk, has been on our radar for a while. We’ve been captivated by the lyrical dynamism and vigor evident in the three singles ‘Big Cat Tattoos,’ ‘Nancy Dearest,’ and ‘Men Like Wire,’ which are teasers from his highly anticipated album, A Firmer Hand, set to release on August 16th via So Recordings. Hamish describes A Firmer Hand as a “grittier” record, promising a raw and unfiltered exploration.
To explore the ‘grit’ we enlisted our resident Punk Professor and musician, George Alley, to discuss the intricacies of Hamish’s writing process, the challenges of being a people pleaser while striving to create authentic art, masculine energies as a muse, receiving praise from legends like Pet Shop Boys and much more.
Hello Hamish! How are you? I’m melting it is 93 Fahrenheit in Philadelphia today, which I think is like 30-something Celsius.
It’s, well, I tell you, for Scotland it’s doing quite well. It is quite hot today. In Edinburgh, so immediately after this interview, I plan on nipping out onto the balcony and sunning myself. So that is what I am planning. But I love Philly. It was the first place I ever went to in the States. Every time I’ve ever been back, I’ve always gone to Philly just because I have friends and family there.
So, I read that there were many ‘unsaid things’ that you alluded to in the last couple of albums, which you feel you’ve addressed head-on in A Firmer Hand. Was that something you had planned when you started the album?
Not really. The band and I see this third album, A Firmer Hand, as part of a trilogy, and that ‘trilogy’ was an accident; we didn’t plan for it to be a three-album story. But with each album, as we’ve been writing it, we get to five or six songs into the writing process, and the albums suddenly take on a character, and you understand the organizing principle or theme running through it. I’ve always felt that’s one of the most exciting aspects of songwriting for me, when the songs tell you what they’re going to be. One of the first songs written for this album, “Questionable Hit,” is quite a salty song, even a bit petty, like a cornered rat lashing out or striking.
‘Questionable Hit’ feels like a diss track towards someone.
It’s a diss track. That’s exactly what it is; full of petty grievances and dissatisfaction. We were recording the previous album at the time I wrote it, and it didn’t fit. It was unlike anything I’d ever written; it deals in the erotic, with a sort of queer sexuality that I hadn’t previously explored. I didn’t know “Questionable Hit” would make demands and challenge me. But as a musician and a songwriter, not to sound too grand about it, I’ve never believed you ought to shy away from anything that’s revealing or makes you vulnerable or exposed.
With the other songs that followed, it became clear that this album was not going to be like the others. It was going to be less embellished, less florid in its language, and deal with a huge number of themes and topics that I hadn’t addressed. It wasn’t necessarily about things I’d hidden before; it was more about the songs never revealing themselves to me before.
You mentioned previously about being nervous introducing such topics to your parents.
I think it’s a common experience. You get to a certain age, and if you’re maybe an agreeable, empathetic person at heart or a people pleaser, which I would say I am, there’s a part of you that wants to keep everyone happy. My parents have always been understanding, and I certainly feel completely understood and seen by them but sometimes you think, “maybe they don’t need to hear or know that about me.” The band and I said this might be the album that our parents might not like, but they haven’t heard it yet.
I understand. I know personally when making art or music, if you have a good relationship with your family or close friends, you ask for feedback from them a lot initially. You kind of want to entertain and get approval from those close to you.
Yeah. I think it’s obviously not just an experience for artists, but I’m 32 now, and I would say that your 20s traditionally are that time in your life when you’re trying to work out who you are, what it is that you care about, not only who you are but who you’re not. By the time you reach your 30s, it’s like, hang on, okay, what am I keeping/getting rid of? How am I defining myself? With this new decade, I don’t want to say you start living your life because obviously you’re living your life in your 20s, but you really start living in your own way and get to a point where you no longer care in the same way about others’ perception of you.
You take A Firmer Hand?
As the title suggests, it’s not so concerned with how it’s being perceived. It’s defiant. It’s a bit more, “it’s okay if you don’t like it. If it’s not for you, that’s absolutely fine.” I’ve pushed through that because I am, as I say, a people pleaser. I thought I’d try and take up less space, and now I’m not doing that quite as much.
That allows you to show more facets; with my own songwriting, I like presenting a character that’s flawed in some way, and I notice you’ve been describing the narrator in some of these new songs as maybe being more flawed, possibly even being the villain in the story.
Well, I’ve said of this record, there’s stuff that doesn’t necessarily make me look great, but that’s equally as much a part of emotional life and experience as anything else. When we were starting to properly wrangle the songs into a particular shape, especially when we were recording and mixing them, even dealing with the artwork for the record, it became obvious that we shouldn’t try to sanitize the record or polish the rough edges. That’s where the good stuff is.
I don’t want to sell my previous records down the river; I’m immensely proud of those records. But there’s been a maturation that’s happened that’s, I think, an important part of living as an artist. It’s a growing unwillingness to compromise, not always with band members (compromising is important), but with this unknown audience, this kind of fictional person that you’re making your music for. It doesn’t make sense to try and project onto them what you think they want.
It’s a bit like creating a Hinge profile. People present an idea of what they think someone else might want instead of who they are.
It’s like a first date with someone, and you’re just an amorphous combination of all these people that you think you want the other person to want, and that is never going to take you anywhere good.
This conversation reminds me of the themes from the first single of A Firmer Hand, ‘Big Cat Tattoos.’
In my previous records, I don’t think I’ve presented these confident displays of love and romance or sort of Lothario confidence. I’ve played with that ironically in my songs and tried to deconstruct that as much as I can. I think my listeners understand that there’s a degree of irony, there’s a kind of wit at the heart of that, that is a sort of knowing wink.
Right, it’s sarcastic.
But with this album, I would say the romance has fallen away to a degree. It is still there, but it’s been replaced in part with a slightly more erotic heart, a lustful side, a desiring side, which by its very nature can be more animalistic, can be uglier, not violent exactly, but it’s not pure and smiley. Whether they’re long-term relationships, flirtations, or one-night stands, this album deals more with a masculine currency and energy.
I’m sure a lot of men would agree with me that relationships, whether they are partners, business partners, friends, or family, involve a sort of vying for status, influence, power, or prestige that I was trying to deal with unashamedly. So, a song like “Big Cat Tattoos” explores these dynamics—the flirtatious early days or odd encounters. There can be all kinds of different energies, like a sort of rivalry, and I wanted to bring that into the songs as well. I’m glad you mentioned “Big Cat Tattoos” because that song is full of these conflicting energies.
I think it’s interesting and not directly discussed in a romantic song how men are often competitive by nature with each other. Usually, there’s this kind of binary lens when discussing a romantic relationship.
Yeah, I would agree with you. I think our society’s an incredibly competitive one, but I would say men—it’s difficult to say whether we’re inherently competitive because obviously society shapes us as well. But there’s something hierarchical there, and we’re now having to find different ways to compete without being so obvious about it.
Yes, with additional layers for queer/gay men.
Especially when it comes to the world of intimate relationships, it can be even just eye contact. This wasn’t necessarily intentional, but I would say some of the songs on the album remind me of bands like the Pet Shop Boys, Culture Club, Bronski Beat, and Soft Cell. I suppose you would call them sort of queer icons. But what I find exciting and inspiring about bands like the Pet Shop Boys is that they are openly gay without sanitizing it. Especially in the wake of something like the AIDS crisis, it was such an important artistic and cultural moment. So, it’s exciting for me to feel in some way like I can pay service back to that music.
Well, there’s so many layers/meanings in those songs, especially with Neil Tennant’s (of the Pet Shop Boys) lyrics; you feel like you are privy to some kind of secret club. The Pet Shop Boys are my favorite band.
Can I just gloat for one second? During our last record, Angel Numbers, I woke up one morning while we were on tour, and Neil Tennant had put on the Pet Shop Boys Facebook page that he was listening to one of our songs and said, “I absolutely love this song.”
Oh, wow. I’d die.
As far as I’m concerned, Neil Tennant, as a lyricist, is deeply inspiring to me with his perfect razor-sharp couplets and incredibly fluid delivery. He’s a hugely inspiring artist to me. So, to wake up to that was the best. I’m still living off that feeling.
You’ve been touring since the spring and will be more this summer and with Travis in the fall, (tour dates here) what was it like to perform these new songs live?
We have played “Big Cat Tattoos” and three others from the album. It’s interesting when you make a set around them because, exactly as I was saying earlier, when I was writing them, it became very clear that some of these songs couldn’t be put next to older songs without this strange contrast emerging.
The album comes out on the 16th of August, and we’re doing a big promotional tour here in the UK where we’re going to tie in quite a lot of these songs. So, that will be a learning curve, but I am excited about it. It’s going to twist the set into a darker place, but I do think the crowds are there for it. The band and I have been lucky enough to establish our music over the past few years in such a way that I really do believe the audience is on our side for whatever we bring to them next.
If you were going to pick a perfect location or venue for A Firmer Hand to live in or be played in, what would it be?
That’s tricky because I would say sometimes you get the sense that certain albums have certain color palettes. I would say, as much as we filmed monochromatic videos [for A Firmer Hand], I do think even with the artwork and the songs, it’s a dark record. I see Nosferatu-style pictures. I see stark white and really dark black. So, I’m led to believe it would be some kind of grittier venue.
The cover for the album falls into that description for sure.
Yeah, it does. It’s a tricky question. I said with my tongue in my cheek about this record when I wrote this record, ‘I opened my closet, and a skeleton came out’. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s a gig in a…
A coffin. [laughter]……..
Yeah. It’s a coffin. Exactly, it’s a basement somewhere.
Loverboy Magazine is named after the hit single by Mariah Carey. What’s a favorite Mariah moment for you?
Well, I tell you what, I love her performance of Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.” I absolutely love that.
Interesting chord changes in that song. I think Nilsson “borrowed” them from Rachmaninoff’s 2ndPiano Concerto.
I think that is exactly what it is, but it’s a beautiful song. Yeah, the chord sequence is lovely. And the key change, everything is great. Mariah, she gives off a certain atmosphere; it can be quite aloof, a mystique that is quite sort of ‘stay back’. But when she performs it and talks about how the song made her cry when she was growing up listening to it, there’s a sort of softness to her that really endeared me to her. It is a cover, but I would choose that.
Preorder A Firmer Hand (available August 16th) here
photography by Simon Murphy and Michaela Simpson
