The dapper Edinburgh indie-pop troubadour returns with his ready wit, polished lyrics and soaring, strong melodies of finely detailed, candid, revealing reference-rich narrative, but also oozing with darkness, irony, empathy and double-edged melancholy. It’s erudite, honest and very personal, Hawk describing how: “In writing this album I opened up my closet, and a skeleton came out. 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.” In other words, while the previous albums skirted around the subject, this one goes for the jugular on his personal life with all its up and downs.
Take, for example the second track: Machiavelli’s Room, one is describes as the album in miniature, with its intimate, edgy details: “I fear I was close to love / I felt him fit me like a glove/ No kidding / I showed him hidden things / He coaxed them from hiding / There's nothing he likes more / Than to watch me disappеaring inside him.” And then also Milk An Ending: “I loathe nights like this / An embarrassment of dancers/ Boutique warehouse space / Physique, hair, and face /So perfect. The distance between your finger and your ring / I feel you near/ I fear you're near leaving/ If papa taught me anything/ If papa taught me anything/ It was never to milk an ending.” These songs are among darker cuts, as is also Autobiography of Spy, a homoerotic twist on James Bond: “And his are not slovenly features / Sucking on my love like leeches/ From Suez to Cuban beaches / Mine is cream and his is peaches.” But there are also three tremendous singles, more immediate tunes and colourfully droll - Big Cat Tattoos, Nancy Dearest, and particularly Men Like Wire, with the opening lines “If its a hand-me-down Jaques Brel, be gentle with me / I want less of the same, I'm not born on a spike/ A man amongst worlds, a man in real life / I wasn't content being just another man in my dreams.” It closes also with the excellent The Hard Won. Double meanings, puns and wordplay out at every corner. A bold, brilliant release. Out on So Recordings.
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