For a musician who started out in the toy-bashing indie pop band Grand Pocket Orchestra, Paddy Hanna is a songwriter whose music has taken on a more serious grandiose tone in recent years and it’s a sound which really suits him.
Coming after ‘Camaradie’, ‘Underprotected’ and ‘Austria’, ‘Bad Boys’ continues this classic pop songwriting vibe with stirring strings, piano tinkles, horns and Hanna’s idiosyncratic vocal delivery.
“We all have one of those in our life” Paddy said of the title before getting a bit more serious about his art:
“I allude to mental illness in my work. It’s considered by many to be a neurosis that spurs on creative work, however it is nothing but a crutch on my own creativity. My time in a depressive haze is spent in complete emptiness, weeks will go by, my beard will have grown out, my pen dried up. So when indeed I allude to mental illness it would usually be during a happy period where I can function. One of the most important days in my life came when I finally opened up about depression and was not met with jeers but rather acceptance and understanding – it’s the first and most significant step you can take.“
Paddy Hanna plays Dublin’s Whelans on Friday 5th May.
The song is released accompanied by ‘Sunday Milkshake’, “a tale of realisation, of sleeping on a dirty couch knowing some mistakes cannot be undone”.
