I Believe in Karma by Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences

Here's a track review I wrote for This Is Fake DIY:

I Believe in Karma is the messy and bloodied remains of a sordid late-night knife fight between Billy Childish and Sergeant Buzfuz. Paul Hawkins attempts to cast himself as the marginal outsider, sticking it to The Man through his scuzzy anti-folk.
And at its best, anti-folk combines the urgency of guitar-driven punk-pop with rousing narratives of protest songs.
However, at its worst, it sounds like Thee Awkward Silences. The line-up (including performance poet Niall Spooner Harvey, Death in Vegas guitarist Ian Button and Buzfuz violinist Kate Arnold) sounds like a drearily liberal dinner party, where barefoot guests discuss Independent on Sunday arts reviews.

Lyrically, I Believe in Karma has no social or political comment; it’s just Paul Hawkins whinging about the woes of being a nice guy – one who holds open doors – unable to find a nice girl. ‘I believe in karma,’ he squalls throughout, ‘where’s my reward?’ A long way off, if you carry on like that.The main problem is how eerily similar it all sounds to Thee Headcoats, the most prolific of Billy Childish’s musical outfits. The excitement of said band is in their barely contained rage at society’s ills and how, even on record, it could all collapse in a whisky-sodden heap at any second. I Believe in Karma scrapes through trying to be charmingly shambolic, but sounds like a mundane, bad parody.