The track opens with a whistled melody so insidiously catchy it borders on the sinister – a musical Trojan horse carrying its payload of social commentary past your defences before you realise what's happening. Proctor's vocals drip with mock reverence as he catalogues the delusions of modern manhood: "Wise guys spend too much / Wise guys are out of touch / Wise guys have all the luck." It's playground poetry elevated to art, each line landing with the precision of a well-aimed dart.

The production crackles with malicious glee, all stomping rhythms and razor-wire guitars that seem to sneer alongside the lyrics. Yet beneath the swagger lies genuine craft – this is no amateur hour character assassination but a carefully constructed piece of musical theatre, complete with dramatic pauses and dynamic shifts that mirror the emotional complexity of its subject matter.

Most impressive is how Proctor navigates the bridge, where Dylan Thomas's shadow falls across the proceedings. "Slow, slow down the days / I know you feel the sunlight fading" transforms the song from simple mockery into something approaching empathy. Here, the wise guy's bravado crumbles to reveal the universal fear beneath – mortality, irrelevance, the slow fade of influence. It's a masterstroke that elevates the entire enterprise.

The Cardiff-born songwriter has created a song that functions on multiple levels: surface-level earworm, social commentary, and psychological portrait. "Wise Guys" manages to be both deeply cynical and oddly compassionate, suggesting that perhaps the real wisdom lies in recognising our own foolishness. In a musical landscape often lacking both wit and bite, Daddy Drwg delivers both in spades.

This is protest music for the therapy generation – smart, self-aware, and devastatingly effective.