Interviews – One Track At A Time

Pictured: Sarah Downie, Charlie Henderson & Jonny Gilbert (2021) (Photo via TheLineOfBestFit.com)

It’s Jacob Braybrooke here! If you have been reading One Track At A Time regularly over the past few months, you have probably caught word that I’ve been falling in love with the fresh night time music of Drug Store Romeos, a very interesting Dream-Pop/Shoegaze/Indie Rock trio from their self-described ‘Sleeepy’ town of Fleet in Hampshire. Signed to Fiction Records – the band are releasing their debut full-length album, ‘The World Within Our Bedrooms’ today! So, I decided to reach out to the band via email for an interview exclusively on One Track At A Time. They were more than happy to have a chat with me, and the stars neatly aligned for the chat to happen! I think that, deep down, I was expecting them to probably be a bit reserved and mysterious, but they were a truly lovely bunch of hardworking musicians who are very visual people, and they were incredibly self-aware. So creative, in fact, that I caught Charlie making art collages for their Instagram pages and Sarah playing the flute just before they popped onto the Zoom chat. Here’s what they had to say to me!

Q1) – First of all, let’s start with a cliche music journalist question. For the readers who may not be aware of you, who are Drug Store Romeos and what makes you, you?

CHARLIE: Well, we are a trio comprised of Sarah (Lead Vocals/Flute), Jonny (Drums/Synths) and me, Charlie (Bass/Keys). There’s quite a lot of things that make us, us. I guess Dream-Pop is a buzz word for us.

SARAH: We don’t have much guitar, but Charlie plays the bass and I play the keys live. We’re more circular than angular.

CHARLIE: We’re kind of soft, but we’re not always soft. Some of the songs on the album are a bit rougher than usual, but there’s like two on the album that are rougher, and we like to play music that sounds fairly minimalist. Our music is quite melancholic, but there’s also a variety of things.

Q2) – That sounds good. The number one thing that really draws me to your music is that it feels like it has built it’s own identity outside of the buzzing environment of the London indie bar scene, and this really connects with me personally because I am from a rural village near Cambridge called Littleport (We don’t even have a bank here anymore!). So, I was wondering, what you do you feel this small town background of yours has to do with your own music?

CHARLIE: I guess we come to play London shows quite often, but we weren’t really a part of the scene there, so for our influences, we would basically influence each other. I think that suburban mentality and the sleepy town we lived in gives our music a sense of escapism. A town outside of our bedrooms. We did, for that period, live in me and Jonny’s house writing, and I guess that writing led to quite a lot of the subject of that album. I guess a lot of London bands’ lives’ spend a lot of time in different pubs, venues, faster paced places. Drinking, doing cocaine, maybe quite loud, so I guess a lot of music in London has been influenced by that mind set. More confident, and a set ego. A set fast pacedness, but we spent a lot of time living a slower pace in our bedrooms. It really influenced the moods and the music that we seeked.

Q3) – You are signed to Fiction Records, who will be releasing your debut album, ‘The World Within Our Bedrooms’ on July 9th. How does it feel to finally have your first album out there in the world?

SARAH: It feels quite confusing, I guess. We are obviously VERY excited about it, but we’re nervous at the same time. We have never released our work as a full length piece together, so we want to paint our sound as ‘Minimalist’ with a lot of details and minimalism. There’s many elements of our world merging together as well. We’ll stop taking from our back catalog about 5 years away from now, so the next one will probably be a bit more exposing and nerve-racking.

CHARLIE: I just hope that people like it. There is some part of me that hopes that it expands our fanbase quite a lot and some more people will follow us, but I hope that it doesn’t become an anti-climax. It’s exciting though, and you can really fall in love with a new band. A new album can be your companion for years, and I don’t normally have many albums that I listen to a lot.

Q4) – Your Shoegaze-like nocturnal sounds feel like they would fit perfectly into the background of a young adult sci-fi flick. Would you ever be interested in producing your own cinematic work specifically for Film and Television?

SARAH: Yeah! We would LOVE to do soundtracks. We are VERY visual people, so it could be quite fun, and we’d love to flesh out the pictures that we love drawing for our own sounds. So, an actual moving picture for our sound would be so cool. A film out on Prime called ‘The Map Of Tiny Perfect Things’ used our track {‘Frame Of Reference’}, although I have not seen it yet. So, we would really love to!

FQ) – Finally, let’s finish off with a dream scenario. You’ll be supporting Black Country, New Road in November (I’ll be seeing them at the Junction in Cambridge!) and you will also be playing at the End Of The Road festival in September. So, if you could perform on any stage in the world, what would you choose? Briefly tell us why!

SARAH: We’ve always wanted to play in Japan ever since I was younger! I wanted to be a Japanese pop star when I was 7. I don’t know any venues personally, but an outdoor Japanese show would be amazing – with great lighting!

CHARLIE: I don’t know many either, but Jonny’s got me into the idea of visiting South America at some point, at the moment. It would be nice to play on a lagoon, or a flotilla, or a forest. At night with candles by the water!