Over the last several years, the Belfast quartet Junk Drawer have drummed up a bit of buzz overseas. Their official debut, 2020’s Ready For The House, earned them a bunch of acclaim, and now they’re back with the first bit of music since its release. In March, Junk Drawer will return with an EP called The Dust Has Come To Stay. Today, they’re sharing the first single from it.

Junk Drawer’s latest track is called “Tears In Costa.” Here’s what the band’s Stevie Lennox had to say about it:

The title stems from a time when I found myself with tears streaming down my face due to a deadly concoction of myself (I get the odd extreme brain reaction from epilepsy) and the over-caffeination native to chain cafe, Costa (where our Rory has completely coincidentally just started working). The general gist of the song comes from the realisation that at any point, we can be flung back to ground zero with nothing but our experience behind us. And that’s tough, but it’s something that needs to be accepted, otherwise, you risk getting pulled down with that reset. The riff idea came from one day when and my partner were cleaning the house, listening to Omni. At the next practice, I presented the riff to the band. They all immediately knew what to do with it, and we more or less finished the song in an hour.

I personally owe a lot of the direction of the song, and my melodies lately, to the existence of Martin Newell of the Cleaners From Venus, the weird pop genius, whose music seems to synthesise memories of this idealised version of the ’60s by way of the ’80s, as though he’s taken it upon himself to invite other people to enjoy the same vibrant nostalgia he’s lived. It has an incredible ability to conjure memories that you’ve never lived, and I think that’s something I’ve become interested in trying to achieve lately.

“Tears In Costa” is accompanied by a video directed by Graham Patterson. Check it out below.

TRACKLIST:

01 “Tears In Costa”
02 “Railroad King”
03 “Suspended Anvil”
04 “Middle Places”

The Dust Has Come To Stay is out 3/11 via Art For Blind.