Hamish Hawk
Liquid Room, Edinburgh 

IT’S not often that a band front-loads the set with new material that completely outshines their previous hits, but there’s an intensity to the new tracks of Hamish Hawk’s A Firmer Hand that has made a better synthesis of their special combo of confrontational rock, introspective insecurity and homoerotic lyrics that upstages the oldies.

Indeed, in the narrow confines of Edinburgh’s Liquid Room the five-piece sounded even more powerful and disciplined than the recordings suggest, and Hawk’s Curtis-like twitchiness juxtaposed the neutral cool of his bandmates to fascinating effect, disclosing the pose of isolated agony and mental defiance that lies at the heart of his best songwriting. Can anyone else make the word “disingenuous” slip effortlessly between verse and chorus? 

Hawk’s deep baritone is an effective instrument, communicating words whose strangeness he relishes, over the ecstatic wash of Andrew Pearson’s guitar. If I have a reservation, it’s the banter between the songs that undermines the atmosphere and the art with a cringe-worthy eagerness to please and tease.