Post Punk Podge: "I've always found that music has been a great release for me to vent frustrations or anxieties"

Post Punk Podge is worried that he’s cursed. During their tour over the summer, the defiantly eccentric Limerick artist and his band, The Technohippies, struggled to get through a gig without something going terribly wrong.

“A monitor blew up in Limerick – we could smell burning onstage, and thought our pedalboards were on fire or something,” he begins. “Then someone threw a pint into the mixing desk by accident at a gig in Dublin. All the electricity stopped working at a gig we played in Cork, just as we were about to start the set. And then when we played Electric Picnic, a lad dislocated his ankle.”

More than anything else, those incidents are an indicator of the kind of cathartic chaos the band’s live shows are famed for – smashing through genre restrictions and social norms as Podge, brandishing a violin and a mic, delivers his enlightening, if madcap, reflections on the state of the nation, and the people within it.

It’s an approach that, over the past eight years or so, has established the masked performer as a key figure in the Irish DIY music scene. His new album, Keep On Raving In The First World, which follows his 2021 full-length debut Euphoric Recall, extends this legacy further still – touching on past struggles, while also embracing a triumphant, dancefloor-dwelling energy.

The album also serves as a celebration of Limerick’s boundary-pushing music community – produced by Chris Quigley (a member of The Personal Vanity Project, and one of the organisers behind the groundbreaking Limerick festival Féile Na Gréine), and featuring contributions from Andrea Mocanu of Small Church and PowPig fame, among others.

“The community here is still very strong,” Podge reckons. “There’s a lot of younger people coming up now, putting on gigs themselves. And there’s still a really strong community around Féile na Gréine. A lot of the people involved in that are putting on visual art exhibitions, and noise music nights, like in the Starling on Nicholas Street.”

But with Podge having also collaborated in the past with the likes of Dublin’s Meryl Streek and Dundalk’s TPM (and the Hendy brothers’ other outfit, The Mary Wallopers, in a live-streamed show for young people in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem back in 2020), his ties to the wider Irish DIY music scene remain just as strong.

“From 2017 on, the birth of DIY LK was huge for Limerick, in terms of bringing bands from the North and Dublin down,” he explains. “We found out that we all had the same things in common. We weren’t seeing the gigs that we wanted to see, or we couldn’t get gigs with the bands we wanted to play with. So there was unity there. We’ve made friends for life through the gigging network that was set up through DIY LK.

“And we’ve seen those bands go on and do amazing things,” he adds. “Like Just Mustard getting signed to Partisan, and being as big as they are now.”

In regards to his own music, Podge continues to view it as “a form of therapy.” He’s spoken openly in the past about his mental health struggles, and delves deeper into those experiences on the new album.

Credit: Erin Plaice

“I’ve always found that music has been a great release for me to vent frustrations or anxieties,” Podge reflects. “People seem to respond to that, because they might be going through something similar themselves.

“I wrote ‘Not Just A Number’ when I was not doing too well, mentally,” he continues. “I decided to pour it into a song, and talk about bipolar depression, and the lack of decent mental health services in Ireland. ‘Conscience’ is about having OCD, and suffering from that.”

The track, ‘Alcoholics Unanimous’, meanwhile, touches on the destruction caused by problem-drinking. Does Podge feel there’s still stigma around sobriety in Ireland?

“Yeah, there is a bit,” he says. “The younger generation seems to be drinking less than my generation. But with us, things are still swept under the carpet a little bit, when it comes to alcohol. People are afraid to go out in case they’ll be judged, like, ‘Why are you not drinking?!’ They just don’t want those questions. Even myself, I’d avoid certain things, like a school reunion, because I know that they’re just going on a pub crawl.”

Elsewhere, on ‘Not Enough Women’, Podge is taking aim at music scenes that remain dominated by men, and the misogynistic behaviour he’s witnessed at gigs.

“From going to hip-hop gigs over the years, it’s always been very male-oriented,” he remarks. “There needs to be more of a switch-up there. In punk, there are more women in bands now – like Problem Patterns and 50 Foot Woman. It’s boring if you’re only getting the point of view from one gender or sexuality.”

Although Podge clearly remains engaged with the world around him – and organised a fundraiser gig for Palestine back in July – he tells me that he tries “not to be overly political with songs anymore.”

“We did that an awful lot, especially about Irish politics,” he resumes. “I’ve said all I could say in regards to that. A lot of the things I said in ‘Post-Punk Election Party’ [released in 2016] are still relevant today. Things haven’t changed. It’s only the names of the people involved that have changed, really.”

Those more familiar with Podge’s political work – like the searing ‘Government Security’, inspired by the 2018 North Frederick Street eviction – might be surprised by the joyful celebration of his family’s artistic and musical roots on one of the new album’s stand-out tracks, ‘DNA’.

“I think that’s where I get the music from, on my mam’s side of the family,” he explains. “My grandfather played the piano. My mam’s sister was an artist, and played the piano as well – she was renowned at both. So I just thought ‘DNA’ would be a nice song, as a tribute to that.”

Podge himself came from a classical background, but has also studied Irish Music at University of Limerick.

“Growing up in my house, I would’ve heard an awful lot of trad music – because my dad would’ve been particularly into it,” he tells me. “A lot of Planxty, the Pogues, the Bothy Band, Séamus Begley and Steve Cooney.

“I’d like to incorporate more Irish music into the sound,” he continues. “I’m still figuring out how to do that. Usually when I write fiddle parts for some of the new songs, there’s a touch of it there – like the outro to ‘Party With Them’. But I’d like to do an instrumental album that’s just strings at some stage.”

For now, his main focus is on his upcoming Irish tour, as well as high-profile support slots for The Mary Wallopers and Warmduscher.

“This album is very much made to be played live,” he says. “I still enjoy playing live, an awful lot... When it’s going well!”

Keep On Raving In The First World is out now.

Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies play the Record Room, Limerick (November 8); Toales, Dundalk (9); Lucas Back Bar, Ennis (23); and DeBarra’s, Clonakilty (30).

They also support Warmduscher at Opium, Dublin (November 16); and The Mary Wallopers at Vicar Street, Dublin (December 14 & 15).