In the feisty rock chick stakes, Isabel Monteiro is a sure-fire winner; not only does she possess a big, throaty voice, but she also seems to have cojones of steel.
Within minutes of going onstage, the Brazilian singer has already given her band a good ballbreaking, and wished disgraced Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a "crap Christmas".
The band took her insults in their stride, but Pinochet would not have liked the Portuguese word which was used to describe him. Drugstore trade in the kind of downbeat indie sound which should only appeal to spotty students; however, thanks to Monteiro's recent duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke, the band has reached Top Twenty status, and seems determined to rise above the B-grade crop of Britpoppers. Monteiro is their main weapon, a fiercely opinionated frontwoman who sounds like an Amazonian version of Cerys from Catatonia, but their anchor is the cello playing of Ian Burdge, which binds the subdued guitar of Daron Robinson, the loose-limbed drumming of Mike Chylinski, and the brassy bass playing of Monteiro herself. The songs have a spicy, South American edge, particularly White Magic For Lovers, a lyrical recipe for a hot Rio night, and El President, a rolling, whipcracking tale of political intrigue which she dedicates to the aforementioned fallen despot.
There are some interludes of sadness and loss, such as I Know I Could and Sober, but there are also a few moments of heady abandon, most notably Say Hello and Spacegirl. As a thank-you to Radiohead for their patronage, Drugstore perform an almost rootsy version of Black Star, before finishing with the voodoo rhythm of Devil. They might sometimes sound rough and tumbling, but Drugstore's medicine show could get you hooked.
