Hamish Hawk - Ice-like Empty
New Single • Intriguer/Tenderness (2027). Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Hamish Hawk Turns His Stage Persona into a Darkly Charismatic Character Study
Hailing from Edinburgh, Scotland, Hamish Hawk has built a distinctive place in British alternative music through his commanding baritone, literary songwriting and sharply observed musical pen-portraits. Inspired by storytellers including Leonard Cohen, Jarvis Cocker, Randy Newman and Stephin Merritt, Hawk combines chamber pop and indie rock with wit, theatricality and an unusually rich fascination with language. Following 2024’s A Firmer Hand, he returns with “Ice-like Empty,” one of the first two songs from fourth album Intriguer/Tenderness, out April 2, 2027 via SO Recordings. This time, the complicated relationship under examination is Hawk’s relationship with himself.
Ice-like Empty: When Confidence Becomes a Character of Its Own
Intriguer/Tenderness is built around two opposing versions of Hawk. Intriguer represents the charismatic, aggressive, intimidating and larger-than-life personality associated with performance, while Tenderness embodies his quieter, vulnerable and more domestic counterpart. “Ice-like Empty” belongs firmly to Intriguer, presenting that persona at his most self-assured.
The song translates that character into a cold, calculated punk-funk groove, with Intriguer inhabiting a self-created world of pride, bravado and recklessness. Rather than simply celebrating confidence, Hawk exaggerates the performance until its darker implications begin to emerge. The swagger becomes part character study, part self-interrogation—an artist examining what happens when the version presented onstage starts competing with the person living away from it.
Why It Matters: Artists Are Turning Identity into Internal Dialogue
Songwriting about identity is becoming increasingly interested in contradiction rather than resolution. Public confidence can coexist with private vulnerability; ambition with insecurity; performance with discomfort. Instead of choosing which version represents the authentic self, artists can explore what happens when several conflicting identities exist simultaneously.
“Ice-like Empty” makes that tension unusually explicit by transforming one side of Hawk’s personality into a character capable of speaking for himself. Across Intriguer/Tenderness, that character will confront the more vulnerable Tenderness, turning internal conflict into the architecture of an entire album. For a songwriter already celebrated for creating vivid characters, the intriguing shift is that Hamish Hawk has finally made himself one of them.
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