Isolation Anthems | Junk Drawer
As part of our new series exploring the Coronavirus lockdown and its impact on musicians, this week we spoke to post-punk, krautrock-worshiping indie heroes Junk Drawer.
Recipients of the ‘Best Single’ award at the NI Music Prize 2019 for the brilliant, ‘Year of the Sofa’, Junk Drawer signed to Irish label ‘Art For Blind’ Records last year, with debut album ‘Ready For The House’ scheduled for release April 24th.
Following celebrated sets at Other Voices Music Trail in Ballina, as well two blistering Belfast shows at Output Festival and supporting Belfast drone-pop stalwarts Documenta respectively, Junk Drawer were forced to postpone shows in Dublin, Cork and Limerick last week, as a result of the ongoing global pandemic.
In extraordinary times such as these, how do independent musicians keep their heads above water? How does the news feed into their art? What may the future for music hold, in a post-Covid19 world? These were just some questions raised in our email correspondence with the drawer.
B - Brian Coney (bass/guitars/vocals)
S - Stevie Lennox (guitar/synth/vocals)
J - Jake Lennox (drums/guitar/synth/bass /vocals)
Hi Brian, thanks for taking the time to chat to us. How have you been holding up?
B: Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down, you know? Just letting the days go by, water flowing underground, into the blue again after the money's gone. Like everyone else, I can't venture far or see my friends or family but it seems that the earth continues to turn on its axis. And that's more than any of us can hope for, really. The light at the end of the tunnel is an Aerosmith riff circa '76.
The outbreak of this virus has caused a massive shift in our daily lives, has music been the last thing on your mind lately, or has it been a comfort through this change?
S: Music has been the first thing on my mind, to be honest, mainly as an escape. I do find that if I'm crabit, it's usually because I've not been listening to anything. Before all of this, about 50% of my 2020 listening had been cult 80s lo-fi pop project The Cleaners From Venus, and I needed to be wary of overexposure. That said, they have this incredible ability unlike anyone I've ever heard - this synthesised nostalgia for a past I've never lived. I've had some emailing & mixing to do with regards to our album coming out next month, prepping the next Litany of Failures compilation, and finalising my other band Unbelievable Lake's debut album. It's a bit of a monolith (one 43 minute piece, partially improvised song recorded live in a church).
The old inner monologue has chewing away to write and play more, but I think this is a time for practice, and the creativity will hopefully come later once the clarity comes and we can get in one room again. I find that hunger feeds creativity. Hopefully. Game emulation, a Cleaners From Venus memoir & good films have also been of great comfort.
S/L: Pretty amazing, as half of us (Jake & Stevie) were in Utrecht at Le Guess Who? festival at the time so it doubled the spring in our step. We weren't together at the time but were in the same room - a beautiful, completely dark hall watching Nicholas Jaar play an experimental set. My phone just started going wild with friends telling me. We got a call from Nicest Guy In The World Ryan O'Neill asking us to get to stage right immediately, to which we had to say "I'm afraid that's not possible". We had one of our rarely-indulged sibling hugs and said "we did good", for a change. Honestly, just knowing we could now afford vinyl was the biggest joy - the award was great, but I wouldn't put much stock in these kinds of things. Then we turned off our phones and saw Godflesh and Earth. That was a great night.
It’s been an incredible rise for Junk Drawer over the last few years and your fan base has grown massively, particularly in the South. What was the first instance you felt something special was starting to happen for the band?
I think we can probably all agree on this - the first time we played Cork with The Great Balloon Race for Alliance Promotions. We took a long break after some terribly-attended, disheartening Belfast gigs. We just started writing and trying to enjoy playing music, and when we got there, it really felt like there was a special kind of atmosphere and the crowd genuinely sung our praises as opposed to the usual unamused "great set". There's something special about playing shows several hours away to a new audience - maybe it's just not relying on your mates to show up and support, or just the same bar you drink in every Saturday, and that they actually found something worthwhile in checking out a band they had no prior connection to. The Cork music scene is also a community of incredibly talented people who aren't afraid to get weird.
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| Beatle-Bums...early Junk Drawer press shot |
There seems to be a family chemistry between the four of you. Stevie (guitar/synth/vocals) and Jake (drums/guitar/synth/bass /vocals) are of course brothers, but do you feel that sort of bond when you play together?
Genuinely yes. As well as the siblings, who have that inbuilt sort-of telepathy, that feeling very much extends outward between us. We are four husbands when it comes to playing together and sharing responsibilities. We come from such a similar place spiritually & have seen so many things as a group, and have tread on more land together than we have with our families & partners. It's hard to articulate it, but we trust each other to fill the space the others leave, or we indulge the space we equally leave. And especially in the last year or so, it really feels like we've become more a single entity that can expand and contract.
What was your first musical memory? Did you grow up dreaming of being in a band?
S: Somewhere in my parents' home video collection there exists footage of me dancing to Achy Breaky Heart. I wish it didn't, but it does. I had absolutely no ambitions of being in a band really. I had never sung until our music teacher forced me into singing Great Balls of Fire. That was the start of a quick downturn in the number of fucks given about academia.
J: My first distinct memory of feeling the awe of mythical profundity was probably looking at our dad's copy of Led Zeppelin IV. The hermit, the inner artwork & everything. Then actually hearing Stairway To Heaven, it seemed beyond this realm because all the music I was listening to was contemporary, angsty and literal.
S: Yeah, agreed. That was the first time a complete product was presented to me and I heard music that evoked something beyond catchy melodies. We also had a trip to Stoke & Manchester when we were aged about 11 & 7 respectively, which was soundtracked by The Beatles' 1 compilation. It changed us, but for me specifically, hearing Eleanor Rigby was the first exposure I'd ever had to the idea of music as art. I mean, they're probably the 2 greatest bands of all time, and I think that's a fundamental truth that no one in the band will argue against.
B: I'm pretty sure seeing the video for Erasure's cover of 'Take a Chance on Me' is my first musical memory. It stands to reason that I love both of those acts today ('Lay All Your Love On Me' is, for my money, easily the best pop song ever written.) Once I discovered Blur, a few years later, that's when I knew I wanted to play or make music in some way or formation. Beetlebum will absolutely do that to a person, after all.
Do you have a favourite Junk Drawer lyric?
S: Probably from our new one. There were a few I wanted to say, but I'll go for "And you love your father as he writes his new CV at 53".
B: I'm a real sucker for "I'm going to miss me when I'm gone", sung by Stevie on album closer, 'Pile'.
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| Junk Drawer < Spacemen 3 |
The tracks you’ve released from your debut album so far deal with questions of self-worth, mental illness and perhaps, finding a little hope in it all. It feels thematically very in tune with the times. What, if any, lessons do you hope listeners will take from ‘Ready For The House’?
J: If you want to think of this album philosophically in a way that you may learn anything, I'd say that it's sort of like a person. It moves in cycles, whether good or bad to those having to put up with it. It's a multi-faceted personality i.e. it likes Pavement but also lovvvves Beak>. Our protagonist shouldn't need to pick which side they prefer; why should they? Stephen Malkmus says just as much to me as any droney psych. So...you shouldn't compare your tremolo chords to Spacemen 3; you're not them. But you do plenty of others' things so it's equal in the end (but we definitely don't think we're better than Spacemen 3). You do you, reader.
S: I will say that lyrically, I guess it speaks to that fundamental need to be understood. I could go into the specifics - epilepsy, human connection, etc, but I'll spare you. If anything drives me creatively, it's being understood.
Returning to the present, we find ourselves in the midst of a nationwide lockdown. Do you see any long term effects of this pandemic on live music? Positive or negative?
S: Economically, terrible. We're not the people you should probably ask, right enough, haha. I could go into a tirade about the demise of unfettered capitalism is long-overdue, but time will tell how this affects us as a people. It has, however, added a legitimacy to the world of live music streaming. On St. Paddy's day, we watched The Mary Wallopers' session from our respective homes & felt a warmth that imitated that of a show we'd attended - they'll have another on Good Friday, so get on that. We'll be catching a couple of your gigs this week too! I worry for the honest, supportive small businesses and venues that can't afford to operate. Big money clubs will stick this out fine, but our - and most of our peers' - bread and butter lies in the smaller venues. I do think once this ends, though, we're going to see a big increase in people appreciating the value of live music. I just hope the infrastructure survives. Our album launches will be fine in the future - it's just a minor setback for us, and venues have been really sound. In particular, we need to encourage the use of venues like the Black Box - spaces driven by the arts and not profit/club nights.
If I hope anything though, it's that this means people group together and put pressure on the government to stop selling off the fucking NHS. It's the single greatest thing we have as a society here, and if we lose that, the Americanisation of the UK will be complete. Our sister is about to start working in the NHS, and hearing what they've been dealing with is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Taylor Johnson
Pre-order Junk Drawer's debut album 'Ready For The House' from their bandcamp below:
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