Hamish Hawk

★★★★ Heavy Elevator ASSAI RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP

Edinburgh singer’s excellent third album.

Hamish Hawk’s authoritative baritone suggests Scott Walker with a Scots brogue. This is bold stuff, with lyrics that take in Paul the Apostle, the Inner Hebrides and creating something that’ll “sound like Common People sung by Christopher Wren”. On New Rhododendrons, Hawk rhymes “Caravaggio” with “mythological Himalayan hollows”. The words, compositional strength and compelling voice add up to a something like a British Rufus Wainwright. This is Hawk’s third album, but the first under just that binomial. He’s previously collaborated with King Creosote’s Kenny Anderson, but this is an unanticipated leap forward. The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973 is the track where Wren sings Pulp. The title might’ve come from preimplosion Morrissey, and many of these songs could hold their own on a Smiths album.