Hamish Hawk - Intriguer/Tenderness Hamish Hawk

“It’s actually quite scary to see what I say to myself.” — Hamish Hawk

Following the cathartic, critically acclaimed A Firmer Hand, which reached #22 in the UK Official Album Chart in August 2024, Edinburgh songwriter Hamish Hawk returns with Intriguer/Tenderness, a darker, more volatile and deeply self-reflective record that turns the scrutiny of his previous album inwards.

Where A Firmer Hand explored sexuality, masculinity and the complex power dynamics of Hawk’s relationships with other men, Intriguer/Tenderness discovers that the most complicated relationship he has to reckon with is his own.

The album is built around two opposing characters living within Hawk: Intriguer, the charismatic, aggressive, powerful and intimidating side of his personality, and Tenderness, the more submissive, domestic and vulnerable counterpart. Across the record, the two voices argue, attack and challenge one another, creating an album that is as psychologically intense as it is musically compelling.

“I thought I'd done most of my reckoning with A Firmer Hand,” says Hawk. “I could go, oh, these men have done all this – but well, what about this guy? Have I done anything to me?”

The result is an album concerned with the uneasy territory between performance and private life, power and vulnerability, guilt and shame, triumph and failure. Hawk describes the relationship between these two selves as involving “lies and deceit and notions of consent and pain and discomfort”.

Musically, Intriguer/Tenderness retains the darkness and shadow of its predecessor but is more agile, playful and unpredictable. Hawk describes it as “a lighter on its feet” record, while warning that its darkest moments are “potentially even darker”. The album moves effortlessly between swaggering electronic pulses, gothic guitar, rolling drums, fractured rhythms and theatrical melodies, creating a sound that can be both elegant and threatening within the same song.

Intriguer/Tenderness is therefore both an intensely personal album and a remarkably universal one: a record about the arguments we have with ourselves, the voices we keep hidden, and the ways performance, intimacy, shame and desire can collide.

“The stories you say in your own head to yourself are shocking if your inner monologue is really as mean-spirited as mine is.” — Hamish Hawk