MAGIC AND LOSS

A year ago, when Isabel Monteiro's mother died, writing and recording another album was understandably the last thing on the Drugstore lead singer's mind.

"It was a very introspective time for me," Monteiro recalls sadly. "That is one of the things in your life that makes you stop and take stock. At first I thought I wasn't going to write anything at all. I just needed to switch off.
"I was a little bit turned off by the industry," she continues, her husky, Brazilian tones deepening further. "Within two weeks my manager was on my back saying, 'look, we've got record labels and they want to hear demo tapes'. I said, 'no, look, I just want to take time off, you know?'."
Drugstore were fortunate in that one of the interested labels, Global Warming, possessed a sympathetic A...R man.
"He was the only one who understood that it was better not to put pressure on me," Monteiro describes. "He just said, 'record it whenever you're ready'. And you know the way it works with psychology - I went home and I started recording the same day, because I knew I had the freedom to do it whenever I wanted."
When Monteiro left Brazil fifteen years ago, she hoped that by travelling she could postpone having to figure out what she wanted to do with her life. A music-mad teenager ("music was my best friend"), she arrived in England and, at the suggestion of her flatmate, took up the bass guitar.
After playing in a succession of bands, Monteiro finally formed Drugstore in 1992 with American drummer Mike Chylinski. The notion of her singing was still at that time, she laughs, "unthinkable".
"We even auditioned for singers in Drugstore and we couldn't really find anyone," she explains. "But then I kinda started singing the songs and thinking, 'maybe they're my own little stories and I'll be the one person who can tell these stories truthfully'."
Soon afterwards, guitarist Daron Robinson joined up. In 1997, the band line-up was completed with the addition of cellist Ian Burdge. Two albums and one achingly lovely duet on 'El President' with Thom Yorke later, Drugstore have carved a unique place for themselves in the alt-pop hemisphere.
While the new record, Songs For The Jet Set, showcases an altogether darker sound, its yearning strains of cello and pedal-steel fused with tender, heartfelt lyrics triumph more often than not amidst the melancholy.
Monteiro believes that this new direction is inextricably linked with her mother's death. "It's difficult to distance yourself from whatever you create," she relates slowly. "I tend to write about things that come from subconscious stuff in my mind - stuff that's been happening to me. The album is part of recovering from that, so it's very intimate."
Q magazine suggested that Drugstore's new sound might be due in part to the band's comparative lack of chart success despite their obvious talent.
Monteiro laughs. "We resigned ourselves to that a long time ago. We're pretty underrated, I think, but it's better to be underrated than overrated as long as we're happy with the stuff we're doing. In the long run, that's what we're going to be proud of. Look at how many dodgy bands have had top ten's!"
Rhythmically, at least, the record seems to recall the more sensuous textures of Latin America than frosty old England. Does she feel that her native homeland still influences her creative process?
"I think there's a little bit of that," she agrees. "I remember my mother said, 'you may go to England but you're never gonna stop being who you are. You carry that luggage wherever you go'.
"I don't know if it's a cultural thing," she adds, "but I'm also slightly more emotional than everybody else in the band. They say I'm a Latin American dictator - that's what they say behind my back. They think I don't know that, but I do because I have spies!" She begins to giggle. "They also think I'm paranoid as well!"
Monteiro becomes momentarily more serious when asked what she means by the title of the record.
"It's about how you go through life with so many aspirations and you might find yourself on the wrong track," she asserts. "Most people, sometimes on their deathbed, realise that they have wasted time and I think that is a little bit of what Songs For The Jet Set is about.
"So it's not exactly the gold jet plane and the high life, that's not where it's at." She chuckles. "Rich people are welcome to offer us things, though. Definitely."

Songs For The Jet Set is available now on Global Warming