If there’s one man that’s been on a collaborative buzz recently, it’s been Limerick’s hurley-wielding agitpop specialist Post-Punk Podge. While busying away on his and the Technohippies’ debut album for release later this year, Podge has kept the new music coming, with recent singles featuring collaborators including West-of-Ireland hip-hop duo Bleak Stack, Liv 3, and Donegal doomers Tuath in addition to a hectic gigging schedule that stops in Cork this weekend for Quarter Block Party 2020.
More important than all the name drops, however, is the emphatic, urgent message of social justice, equality and fair play that drips from every Lydon-esque howl and sneer that emanates from Podge’s towering frame: everything from homelessness and domestic abuse, to the state of the state, has been subject to a Podge broadside, and as we rail past election season into another uncertain government, the next social challenge for Ireland becomes clear.
Last week, this parish’s Kelly Doherty ran a piece on a pair of Galway musicians living in Direct Provision, and slated for deportation. Direct Provision has been part of the official structure in Ireland since its institution in 1999 by the then-Fianna Fáil government, as a temporary fix for an increase in numbers seeking asylum. Six months has turned to over twenty years, and questions hang heavy over the system’s suitability for purpose, to say the very least: the system is openly referred to as “our generation’s Magdalene Laundries”.
On new single ‘Stuck in the System’, Podge spares nothing in addressing the inequities perpetuated by the system as it stands, addressing systematic causes & effects, and calling for an end to Direct Provision while a whirring, distorted-bass broadside served up by Limerick man DJ Limewire (Cathal Histon of Bleeding Heart Pigeons) ticks away to a sudden stop. The lyric video is below.
For more on the effects of Direct Provision, as well as interviews with some of those currently and formerly in the system, check out Asylum Archive.
Post-Punk Podge plays the Kino in Cork this Saturday night as part of Quarter Block Party. For more info and tickets, head here.
