Review | Hamish Hawk at The Wedgewood Rooms: "A knowing playfulness"

Put together by The National Lottery and the Music Venue Trust, you can take a guest to the gigs for “free”, as long as you provide proof that you’ve bought a lottery ticket/scratchcard recently – effectively halving what are already reasonably priced tickets.

Last summer The Wedge played host to Everything, Everything on one such tour, this year we get the singer-songwriter Hamish Hawk.

After releasing a clutch of albums as a solo act, he had a rethink, drafted in a full band and released the acclaimed Heavy Elevator album in 2021. He has continued that upwards trajectory with this year’s Angel Numbers.

Live, Hawk strikes a mercurial figure – lots of hand gestures, prowling all of the stage, coquettish glances and glares over the mic – there’s a knowing playfulness to the performance, and it is very much a performance. Many of these songs capture a story, and Hawk is acting them out for us.

It’s a style which may recall others, but is also very much his own.

Musically, it’s smart indie-pop that doesn’t talk down to its audience. But there’s a harder edge than the recorded counterparts – mostly down to guitarist Andrew Pearson who is allowed off the leash on occasion with some blistering solos.

The set is split pretty evenly between the last two albums, with Angel Numbers’ title track a particular highlight, and there’s a couple of new numbers thrown in – Big Cat Tattoo lingers in the memory.

Having no truck with fake encores, Hawk tells us they’re not going to bother leaving the stage, before launching into their best known track, which has perhaps the most unwieldy title ever for a mass singalong – The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973.

One of the names often mentioned by way of comparison to Hawk is Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, and here he leans into that comparison with a crowd-pleasing and lively cover of the former band’s Disco 2000.

On this evidence, Hawk should soon be commanding bigger stages. As Pulp have proved, there is an audience for it.

And if this music thing doesn’t work out, then there’s always a career in musical theatre beckoning...