Drug Store Romeos named their debut album The world within our bedrooms. It only became clear to me just how rich this inner world is, when I spoke with their guitarist Charlie, quite aptly, straight from his own dreamily decorated bedroom via Zoom. Charlie’s world is one full of musings on chakras, Japanese culture, and the documentarian Werner Herzog. He currently has three books on the go and frequently offered soft-spoken but weighty philosophical adages, a few gems including, “boring people make boring music” and “the universe can be a big, scary place where nothing means anything intrinsically”.
Charlie plays alongside Sarah and Jonny, a trio who met as teenagers in their hometown of Flint, after Sarah responded to a local advert from the two looking for members to join their band. Their music is cinematic, swirling, and playful, and their long-awaited 15-track debut, released just over half a year ago, provided the perfect introduction to their sound.
After relaying his satisfaction at the warm response to the album, Charlie turns to the more technical side of album campaigns, a conversation that quickly becomes quite profound. “I guess a big part of the campaign nowadays is whether your song gets added to a Spotify or Amazon playlist. And we got added to the Dream Pop playlist, which made me really happy. Some people hate categorising music but I’m happy to because the universe is, or can be, quite a big, scary, place where nothing really means anything intrinsically. So, I quite like that, as humans, we’ve made these words to associate combinations of sounds and moods. For many years, when we were trying to find our sound, we were hopping between raw, minimal post-punk and it took us a while to be like, yes, we wanna make this dream pop album!”
To complement their dream pop sound, colour has always been important to the band, and their set lists state which colour is associated with which song. I’m curious about who picks each colour and why it’s important to have this at their live shows. “In the past we’ve talked as a group about what colours are associated with what songs,” remarks Charlie, “I remember a few summers ago being in Jonny’s garden sitting in a circle and trying to decide on colours for the songs in our set. Sometimes, we would be on the exact same page, and that was great! But then, sometimes, someone would say ‘yellow and red’ and someone else would go ‘blue and purple’ and we’d sort of debate it: ‘I think it sounds purple because there’s this whimsical depth to it’, you know. Then it’s normally the person who wrote the song or chord progression that gets the final say.”
He tells me that they have the colours on the setlist so that the lighting on stage can be queued up appropriately: “For a live set it’s really important because, if the right colours aren’t immersing the whole stage whilst we’re playing the song, it just feels really wrong and like we’re not getting across the song in the right way. I feel like there is an intrinsic link between colour and sound.”
“It’s nourishing and moving to be able to distance yourself from harsh truths in your own life”
To give an insight into Charlie’s intensely visual mind, in illustrating this sound-colour link, he describes how the chakras in yoga and the graphic EQ bands in music software Logic both order their colours identically. “I wish we could have elements of music videos playing behind us at live sets” he continues, “because I feel like our songs aren’t really live songs as much, they’re not really for dancing. So, you really need to get the vision and our vision always encompasses a visual element.”
After assuring him that you can definitely dance to their music (“Frame of Reference” is a go-to for bedroom boogies) I stick to the topic of visuals, wondering whether Charlie is conscious of how the band looks. “Definitely. I think the look of a person ties into their personality and when someone views this alongside the music it influences their perception of the song. Trying to construct personality through fashion is not something we’ve spent ages thinking about, it’s developed quite naturally, but we have talked about how important clothes are for bands. We have similar idols and and interest in similar eras so luckily our individual styles tend to work well alongside one another.”
“For our image, we didn’t have a very good town centre, but we did have about nine charity shops.” Charlie tells me. “So, a lot of what we did when we were teenagers was to go through all of them. The stuff you find in there tends to be really pretty 80s or 90s outfits, rather than an early 2000s type of thing. Also, when me and Jonny met Sarah, we were more into jeans and punky stuff, but she had a really strong look. So, I thought, oh I’ll try!”
Weekends of charity shopping in the town centre seem to characterise the suburban dreaminess of their songs, and the band have talked before about using their music as a form of escapism and romanticisation of early small-town existence. Mindful that a lot of cultural value is placed on depictions of gritty reality, I’m curious as to whether Charlie feels there is still a need for escapism. “I think it definitely has its place. I agree that having songs about real life and inequality, that’s important for a lot of people. Sometimes you want to hear another human sharing your exact pain. But I think escapism is important as well, because I think dynamics are important in life. It’s nourishing and moving to be able to distance yourself from harsh truths in your own life. You can be exposed to a whole other array of emotions, a feeling of magic and mystery and delicacy.”
“Your music can never be more or less than you are as a human”
I move on to asking about the return to live music and whether performing after such a long break now feels different and, rather unexpectedly, Charlie gives quite a mixed answer. “I would say not massively – we still had good shows and bad shows. Some shows were amazing; everyone was silent during the songs, energetically supportive and dancing. And then we played two shows for an indoor festival where people didn’t really give a shit! So many bands were on and I don’t think we were loud enough. It wasn’t a very nice experience.”
“But at our own shows,” he follows up, “everyone was really, really lovely. We had never had people sing along to our music before COVID, but now, in ‘Frame of Reference’ people sing along to the chorus! I’ve never had that in my life before, so that felt incredible. We have our minor hit now, it’s kind of funny! Some people won’t know any of our songs and then that song comes on and they’re all like… [he imitates a screaming sound]!”
Having already exceeded the meagre Zoom time limit, I finished by asking what his advice would be for budding musicians and, true to form, he offered an extensive list. “I think genuinely if they want to get signed to a label, sadly, because all the A&Rs are in London, you have to play lots there. There’s a circuit of venues like The Windmill, The Shacklewell Arms, the Victoria. I fully believe if you are great, and you play those venues, then A&Rs will find you. There were a few bands around two years older than us – Sorry and Goat Girl – and they had just landed fairly big record deals, so we figured out where they were playing and then just started playing those venues. We did it for a year and a half as well… It’s quite an intense process and it’s very emotional.”
A logic of self-improvement underpins a lot of Charlie’s attitude towards music. He tells me how, for future music, he wants to be more immersed in his emotions, and then interrupts this train of thought to tell me, “Oh! Alice Coltrane, who’s one of my favourite ever musicians, her main advice is to hit the books! So, I’ve been trying to learn more music theory recently – you’re trying to give people that really satisfying feeling when you hear something and feel it in your whole body! I realise there’s lots of songs that would be better if I was less lazy.”
The final piece of advice Charlie gives me is: “I think it’s important to dance to your songs as you make them. While writing songs, I’ll play the drums to make movement, and me moving influences what I play. At a primal level, I guess the first music was rhythmic. As humans we drum and when everyone’s in rhythm together you can connect to that. It creates this feeling you can’t really put into words.”
Throughout our interview, I was struck by the way Charlie would shift from speaking in meticulous detail about the music industry and daily life, to drawing abstract contemplations about what it means to be human. “Your music can never be more or less than you are as a human” is something Charlie repeats throughout our interview, a Quincy Jones quote that has inspired him to try and become a more interesting person. If there is truth to this quote, then I leave my conversation with Charlie confident that future music by Drug Store Romeos is set to be as restless, thoughtful, and imaginative as the members themselves.
