Drugstore

indie

Often hard to pin-down and wrongly bundled along their 90's contemporaries, Drugstore have always quietly stood away from the pack, led by Brazilian songwriter and bassist Isabel Monteiro. Had anyone actually thought about it, Drugstore should have been branded Alt-indie-country - as Isabel’s smoky vocals and pitch-dark lyrical subject matter, coupled with the band’s minimalist, melancholic guitar and string arrangements, stick them firmly in the lovelorn, caustic company of Low, Dusty in Memphis and Leonard Cohen. Throughout the band's eventful career (although Isabel prefers to describe it as an adventure rather than a professional enterprise), the band have landed 2x top 50 album charts and a top 20 single. Drugstore's music nimbly hops over the ages, from 1920s Berlin cabaret through the French chanson tradition, via The Velvet Undergrounds woozy melodic charm and Tom Waits’bar-room badinage, across PJ Harveys earnest intellect and The Bad Seeds’rumbling, angry melancholia, with an intoxicating mix of heartfelt and carefree disarming vérité. The band was formed in 1993 when Isabel Monteiro and american drummer Mike Chylinski got together via a flat-share in East London. Soon after their self-financed debut single ‘Alive’ was released, and having only performed a handful of gigs, the band signed a major deal with maverick label GoDiscs. The single immediately draw an unprecedented amount of attention, earning the band their first of many 'single of th...