“‘The Androgynous Hockey Stick’ was written as a means to reclaim my negative experience playing hockey as a kid into a personal anthem. It is a call to counter the narrative which has both glorified the sport and traditionally ignored the varying degrees of toxic culture it has enabled,” says Daniel Walker, the steadfast captain of Owen Meany’s Batting Stance. “This song draws from my childhood being exposed and reduced by those perpetuating false ideals of maleness. As a child, it seemed when we put on the jersey we weren’t performing for the sake of a sport but something else entirely.”

 

Guiding the listener through themes of oppressive bullying, Judith Butler’s gender theory, and an underlying systemic culture of violence within the sport, Walker creates a window through which to see hockey in a new light.

 

 

Blending his perspective with the influence of academically-inclined lyricists such as John K. Sampson and John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, the latest from Owen Meany’s Batting Stance establishes the Halifax-based act as not only a fervent student in the landscape of literary folk but as a future torch bearer for the genre.