Hard Man is about the perils of being a hard man and how machoism is actually the downfall of man.
Post Punk Podge
Post Punk Podge has always had his cross-hairs pointed at the toxic elements of male dominated society, but in this one he’s specifically pointing to that ‘always on’ threat at the chip shop after a few pints and ‘that one fuckin family round the town thats always causin hassle that nobody says anything to because if they do the whole town will be against them’. A succinct and typically Irish critique.
The deeper message touches on something we all face growing up in a catholic dystopia – the locker room bullshit gone awry, the oft spake “boys will be boys” turned into lesser spake “men will just be men” – the culture that we daren’t speak out about lest we be looked at funny all our lives… who wants to look funny in front of their peers, eh? Counterbalancing this serious tone with their much less serious (on the exterior) personalities are the Hendy brothers aka TPM (also aka The Mary Wallopers), employing such visual metaphors as petting a cat to signify that they ain’t no cat for petting a cat.
It’s good to see artists in Ireland making these points tangible in working class language and getting right down to the meat and potatoes (as opposed to the disconnected, Americanised, self-flagellating, upper-middle-class semantics used by some).
Thank god this exists.
