Hamish Hawk’s latest album is by far his most personal yet, dealing primarily with his relationships with men, taking in sex and romance, family and friendships. There’s a slight dialling down of the excessively verbose style he’s known for, something that is thrilling to hear, but sometimes creates an ironic or intellectual distance between artist and listener. This is made up for by more muscular and bombastic arrangements, though the more conventional approach to melody takes a bit of the sparkle off a few songs.
‘Juliet As Epithet’ is a gentle way to ease in, a track that could’ve easily been at home on last year’s ‘Angel Numbers’. Hawk is at his loquacious best (and even sounding a little like Zach Condon), though there’s a subtlety, a refinement that hints at the growth from album to album. ‘Machiavelli’s Room’ is explicit in its theme – sexual quandaries – and Hawk’s baritone has never sounded so dramatic, recalling Peter Murphy amidst an austere arrangement. And then ‘Big Cat Tattoos’ switches tack again, opting for funky twang and ’80s effects, Hawk this time coming off like a louche John Grant character, dripping in disdain, desire and self-loathing.
And the album never really settles after that – there are some songs that sound like solo Morrissey (‘Disingenuous’, ‘You Can Film Me’), the odd squalling guitar solo (‘Nancy Dearest’), the return to form (‘Men Like Wire’, ‘Questionable Fit’) and a bit of a damp squib closer (‘The Hard Won’). Hawk still knows his way around a lyric: “You bored my friends from out of town with the virtues of shoegaze” is probably the pick of the bunch, but winking references to “hand-me-down Jacques Brel” or the lovely image of “driving in drag down the Moray coast” are equally arresting.
It isn’t as though Hawk and co. have sold out exactly, but there is a feeling that some of these big-sounding cuts will work well in the increasingly large rooms they’re now commanding (e.g. supporting Travis on the road this year, including a show at the Hydro). Maybe splitting the difference between the nuance of ‘The Mauritanian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973’ and the big field energy of another garrulous lyricist like Jarvis Cocker is a smart move, and ‘A Firmer Hand’ does still retain a bit of both. Here’s hoping the pull of one won’t diminish the effect of the other, because when Hawk is at his best, there’s no-one who can do it quite like him.
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