Junk Drawer’s debut album – 2020’s Ready For The House (Art For Blind) – was a great LP that, truth be told, was never in heavy rotation on my turntable. But their follow-up album – comprising leaner, maybe even cleaner songs – is one of my favourite releases of the year so far.
As per the band, Days of Heaven is billed as an “attempt to make a work of weird, cosmic Ulster music”, adding local footprints to the path well trodden by the likes of Gram Parsons, The Byrds and Grateful Dead. But to pigeonhole the record like this detracts from its disparate influences and careful composition.
The lead single – ‘Nids Niteca’ – first appeared on the compilation A Litany of Failures, Vol. IV (A Litany of Failures, 2023) and bears much more similarity with 2022’s The Dust Has Come To Stay EP (Art For Blind) than the debut, with a spiky riff that leans into the band’s punkier side. In fact, these punk sensibilities underline most of the album’s A side, with vocal production (and whistles!) the main concession to cosmic Ulstercana among Television-esque guitar parts.
The album really starts to lean on its late-60s-early-70s influences on ‘Where Goes The Time’, a worthy Neil Young pastiche that could slot in anywhere among the opening three tracks of After the Gold Rush (Reprise, 1970).
Second single and side B opener ‘Loughgall Circus’ is the most obviously Ulster-influenced of the lot, with Saundersian turns of phrase sharing lines with a context that is very ‘here’, all set, rather fittingly, to absurdist fairground music. The haunting atmosphere continues across ‘Black Ball ’85’ and ‘Opitgan 2’ before album closer, ‘Ghosts Of Leisure’ ascends into a glorious Velvet Underground wig-out.
