Stephen Jaymes, the folk punk poet, returns with a sly and soul searching song for the frayed nerves of 2025.

There is a special kind of exhaustion that hits when outrage becomes the national pastime. On new release “Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In”, Stephen Jaymes captures that feeling with an almost uncomfortable accuracy and is able to make it sound catchy too!

This latest single from Jaymes’s upcoming album “King Jaymes” finds him in rare form: drowsy-eyed, world weary but lucid as ever. Over a shuffling rhythm that evokes a late night stumble through emotional wreckage, Jaymes meditates on trauma, conflict and the desperate search for relief.

Whether it’s heartbreak, politics or the growing absurdity of modern life, the title isn’t really about narcotics at all. It is about the long aching pause before healing can begin. “Whatever it takes,” the song seems to shrug: “Whatever gets you through.”

The track walks a tightrope between bar room blues and surreal lounge punk. Bottles clink in the background like percussion. The chords are loose but deliberate also, with an unhurried groove. Jaymes’s voice, part crooner part confessor, floats just behind the beat as if he is narrating from the bottom of a half remembered dream. It is theatrical, but not posturing. You can believe every word he says.

The lyrics for “Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In” deliver a kind of poetic clarity that is becoming of Jaymes’s signature sound. He doesn’t give you slogans, he give symbols. Voodoo dolls, needle pricks. Arguments that circle the drain. In one breath, he is talking about a romantic burnout; in the next, he is hinting at a bigger cultural fatigue.

This is the kind of song that can make you laugh, and then maybe tear you up a little because you have felt it too.

If Baby Can’t Be Helped was Jaymes diagnosing our collective Baby Brain Syndrome, this new single is him whispering from the recovery room.

For fans of Leonard Cohen’s sardonic honesty, Beck’s melancholy, or even Zappa’s smirking surrealism, “Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In” is a necessary stop. It doesn’t promise easy answers, but it does something which is more powerful. It sits with you in the chaos, cracks a half smile and asks “Should we put on another record while we wait?”

Listen to “Waiting for the Drugs to Kick In” on Spotify.

Keep up with everything Stephen Jaymes on his Website.