Cat Clyde wrote a swamp-blues song about patriarchy and shot a video where she’s the only woman in a room full of men playing poker, smoking cigarettes, and stepping into a boxing ring as a man’s opponent.
“Man’s World” is about the exhaustion of existing in spaces designed for men, and needing a shield just to protect your heart.
The track is the second single from Mud Blood Bone, her fourth album arriving 13th March 2026 via Concord Records.
Produced by Drew Vandenberg, it opens on a single acoustic guitar before the electric guitar, bass, percussion, and knee slaps turn it into something raucous.
It’s indie-folk that picked up grit somewhere between Ontario and England, where Clyde wrote parts of this album in her 1973 Boler trailer and on narrowboats between festival runs.
The groove is swampy. The energy is high. Her vocals sit in the mix with an edge that comes from knowing exactly what she’s saying.
When she sings “I can’t express my woman-self without a shield across my chest,” there’s no plea in it. Just fact.
The groove feels almost celebratory, which sits oddly against lyrics about needing walls to keep vampires out. Clyde sounds more defiant than defeated. She’s refusing to let the exhaustion win.
Clyde’s Métis heritage runs through how she wrote this album. The Métis are an Indigenous people in Canada, and while working on Mud Blood Bone she pulled from those roots and from the way the natural world operates.
A 28-day cycle instead of a 24-hour clock. A 13-month year, not 12. The frustration in “Man’s World” comes from being forced into a rhythm that doesn’t fit your body.
The video, directed by Lukáš Hyrman, plays like satire but doesn’t overdo it. Clyde sits among men in period clothing, drinks at a table, gambling, fights in the ring.
The men aren’t villains. They’re just taking up all the room because nobody told them not to.
The production knows when to back off. Vandenberg, who’s worked with Toro Y Moi and Faye Webster, lets the groove do the work.
The knee slaps and handclaps push the rhythm without overpowering it. Nothing’s polished past recognition, the guitar still has grit, the bass still has room to move.
What matters is the last line: “No, I can’t express my woman-self without a shield across my chest.” No resolution. No redemption arc. The shield stays on because it has to.
Mud Blood Bone drops 13th March 2026.
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