The song is taken from their forthcoming EP 'The Dust Has Come To Stay', which will be available on March 11 through Art For Blind Records. Pre-order your copy here.
Recorded with Chris Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad, Robocobra Quartet), "Railroad King" signposts another exciting release from Junk Drawer who are made up of four multi-instrumentalists: brothers, Stevie Lennox and Jake Lennox, Brian Coney and Rory Dee. The new single really turns the dial on the 60s-inspired garage-rock tones of the quartet who frequently turn to their crate-digging sensibilities for inspiration: Deerhoof, The Cleaners From Venus, Spacemen 3, Ween, Richard Dawson and Television.
Speaking about it, Jake says: "I’d written the lyrics to this song before I’d realised I was on the autistic spectrum, but the lyrics made total sense once the realisation hit. It’s about not wanting to be away from the public world, adventuring happily with my imagination; walking by myself and making up songs etc. It also references the autistic feeling of feeling like my body is just a vessel that I want to ‘zip off’ to be my true self.
Lyrically, as I noodled through the main melody, the primary influence was Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Free”. During the writing sessions for the song as I was improvising, one of the repeated verses became “I just walk along and stroll and sing. I see better days and I do better things.” Folk music has always been my favourite genre and I always subconsciously bring in those kinds of songwriting elements rather than more modern rock formats. For example, this song has no chorus as such, but it has a refrain at the end of each verse that performs that function. I much prefer that style, it means I can play with the rhyming a bit more and I can add more words."
Watch/listen below.
