His albums are really, really good - quite a revelation. When I compare them to Jarvis' rather dull solo stuff, they also make me think he must have represented an essential part of Pulp's musical capital. The thing that made Pulp so great, apart from elements that a lot of pop bands have, was a certain indefinable quirkiness, a vague undertone of seaside resort piers, bingo halls and bordering-on-ridiculous sixtiesish sentimental sounds. I thought I had it figured out when I learned that Peter Thomas Soundorchester (purveyors of ludicruous theme music to the sixties German sci-fi TV series Die Raumpatrouille) was an influence on them, but it's all of it right there, in Hawley's solo stuff, that referencing of old styles and tricks that are so essentially outmoded that they make you immediately suspect irony is at play when you encounter them (not that it is). Which is why one above poster is so absolutely right to describe this as "quintessentially mum music". It's a thin line over to Helmut Lotti, but fortunately that line consists in taste and style. In Pulp, these things were in the margins, modifiers on otherwise conventional pop music one could say. Here, it's the very center of things - unapologetically obsolete, and all the more alive for it.
cheers
