Drugstore Biography

Drugstore are:

Daron Robinson - Isabel Monteiro - Mike Chylinski - Ian Burdge
"Please listen to this music in the dark, with your headphones on loud, very isolated from the rest of the world. Because ii is not 'today' music, it's more of a time that exists in your head".
Isabel Monteiro

Drugstore. A unique band; back to give the world more beauty and music journalists more headaches. When they unleashed their eponymous debut album in March 1995 British music critics practically exhausted their thesauruses in heaping praise upon Drugstore. Melody Maker described their music as "delicious poison…music with an irresistibly morbid glamour. Sex and addictive chemicals and evil sounds, mixed and stirred into beautifully sad, delightfully diseased songs…that veer between vulnerability and viciousness, compassion and contempt". NME described Brazilian born Isabel as combining "the vampish sexuality of Nico with the world-weary femme fatality of Marianne Faithful".

Three years later when they released its follow-up, "White Magic For Lovers", the whole world got on board with rave reviews from publications as diverse as Marie Claire, The Times and Select and the band scored a Top 20 hit single with the Pinochet-bashing "El Presidente". Now, after an 18 month break they’re back to woo hearts and steal souls with the deliciously wicked single "I Wanna Love You Like A Man" and a brand new album to follow in January 2001.

Drugstore were born in 1992 when Isabel and American drummer Mike Chylinski, two drifters in a succession of bands met via a flatshare. They began writing material and slowly piecing together a band. In May 1993 the band pressed up 500 copies of their debut single "Alive" on their own Honey label rather than sending out demos to record labels. Not only did it sell out but it was awarded Melody Maker’s Single Of The Week and led to Drugstore signing a publishing deal a couple of months later, "It was a shock because we were under the impression that you needed to have friends in high places", recalls Isabel. "We’re not the sort of people who socialise and hang out, yet we kept getting all these offers". By this time Daron Robinson had joined as another in a succession of guitarists, but he clicked and the band moved on to bigger and better things - a limited edition single "Modern Pleasure" through Rough Trade’s Single’s Club and shows with Smashing Pumpkins, Lemonheads, Echobelly and the Tindersticks.


In March 1994 Drugstore signed to Go! Discs and release two singles "Starcrossed" and "Solitary Party Groover" that increased their growing fan-base and turned them into real critics favourites. 1995 saw the release of the single "Nectarine" as a taster for the band’s full length debut album.

"Drugstore", the album was released in March 1995 to a wave of glowing critical reviews. Isabel said of the album that, "We wanted to keep the sound really naked and give it a raw edge" and the stripped-down arrangements highlighted the band’s unflinching vision and refreshing lack of cynicism. It was this that made Drugstore stand out from the crop of also-ran, wannabe Britpop boys and place them in their own beguiling and seductive position. "Drugstore", the album went on to win the hearts of many fans throughout the world and resulted in numerous festival appearances throughout Europe and America.

However, just as the band completed their second album, Go! Discs hit problems with its parent company so Drugstore moved to leading independent label Roadrunner Records and in April ’98 they released their first single in nearly two years. "El Presidente" was a duet between Isabel and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and swept on to playlists throughout the UK, resulting in the band’s first Top 20 placing.

The second album "White Magic For Lovers" was released soon after and was greeted with almost universal acclaim. More singles followed including the epic "Sober" and live favourite "Say Hello" with its clarion call to "all the drunkards, the prostitutes and freaks" and Drugstore toured Britain and Europe, building their devoted army of fans with every show. In fact, their profile rose so much that they even appeared in saucy features in Sky Magazine and in demonstrations calling for the trial of murderous Chilean dictator Augustus Pinochet.

In 1999 Drugstore kept up a string of appearances at festivals throughout the world, while the band took stock of their position. Without a label after Roadrunner decided to concentrate on its core audience of heavy metal, Drugstore were once again free to choose their own destiny. Isabel kept writing songs in preparation for the band’s third album while the other band members pursued their own musical agendas.

Finally, after a bidding war between interested labels Drugstore decided to sign with another independent, in the form of Global Warming Records. The deal was inked in March and the band headed straight into Battery Studios in West London and recorded their new album "Songs For The Jetset" in just ten days. The resulting work is their best yet – full of hope and love, loss and sorrow, pain and beauty in equal measures, all sprinkled with that indefinable Drugstore magic.

"Songs For The Jetset" will be released in January 2001 but in the meantime Drugstore have been keeping the faithful happy with some low key London shows and the forthcoming release on October 9th of a brand new single "I Wanna Love You Like A Man". It’s an uptempo blast of piano, guitar and cello, all topped off with Isabel’s deliriously sexy vocal.

Part of no scene but a world entirely of their own making, Drugstore have a vital new sound to offer. Sink into the star-drenched beauty of their midnight melancholia and discover it for yourself.

William Luff



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