It’s 7.30 on a Friday night, and Liverpool’s Korova club is bustling the exact way you’d expect it to be following the end of the mainstream horror that is the nine to five working week.
Those familiar with Korova will understand that the thought of trying to find a band amongst a club this notorious as being a must-drink spot for band types, encourages paranoid suggestions that the next half hour could well be spent glaring incessantly at well dressed, cool looking people in the hope that they’re the band I’m here to interview.
But then, amongst a table littered with vanquished noodle boxes and busy laptops, sit Is Tropical. It’s fair to say that they stand out. Not that they’re dressed in an attention seeking ensemble that screams, ‘we’re in a band, yah’ - although they are wearing some beautiful looking leather jackets which we covet from the offset - it’s more their presence and demeanor. They have the sort of intriguing and attractive personalties that you notice from far across the room - warm and inviting, you can’t help but just want to high five them instantly.
Is Tropical - a name which bassist / vocalist Dominic suggests originates from a scouse friend of theirs who constantly used the phrase ‘is right’ - are a delectable onslaught of catchy, spontaneous, synth pulsating slacker pop. Their songs are pep-laden dreams bound for Summer time status as the tunes to blast at sunshine piss ups in the park.
They’re currently at the beginning of a grilling tour schedule - tonight they’re playing one of their final shows as part of a tour supporting New Young Pony Club, but from here they’ve also got non-stop dates booked supporting Good Shoes, followed by a further tour with The Big Pink.
Shit guys.
“Yeah...” groans synth maestro Simon, grinning ear to ear “it didn’t really plan out did it?”
“I’m sure we’ll get to the end of next month and just be like ‘Aah shit’”, adds Dominic, laughing.
Oh, piss flaps. But at least you fellas have a strategy of tour-time survival, right?
“Well, I think we’re learning that you can’t get absolutely wasted every night, otherwise illness comes on” quips Simon, sensibly. All eyes dart immediately on their poorly looking drummer Gary, who sounds close to coughing up an entire lung any time soon and punctuates the entire interview with exhausting sounding chest rattlers. Poor little lamb.
Simon continues, “We’re trying to plan it so we can stay with people that we know, and it kind of works a little bit. It’s always good to tweet. Tweet - and look out for lonely people. I think because there’s so many of us (on this tour) we can be a bit imposing to just stay in someones house. Half stay in the van one night and the rest stay in a house. It can actually be pretty good fun to stay in the van, it can be a bit uncomfortable but at least you can have a bit of a party. They’re usually the best nights - they’re the ones you remember.”
Onstage, Is Tropical have a visually captivating stage presence courtesy of some gnarly looking Bandit scarves tied around the lower halves of their face. I admit to being fiercely disappointed that they didn’t wear the scarves for the interview - bandit fetishism has officially found it’s peculiar, vulgar place in the heart of this lady, right here. So what’s happening with the bandit masks?
Dominic: We wear them just for the stage really - they help to separate us from the audience. We’re not like Daft Punk or whatever and just wear em all the time.
Simon : It’s weird because when you’re playing an in-store gig, like when we go back to London, it’ll go from us being in the store and drinking to suddenly having to put the masks on and then go onstage. I guess it’d work better if we got to play bigger places and then we could just appear and play a gig and then disappear.
Like a Stars In Your Eyes style smoke screened transformation?
They laugh, and nod in united agreement - “Yeah, just like that!”
Simon: I still think it works, I mean it was never done to just hide ourselves from any audience or to try and be horrendously mysterious, it was just something to make us look more interesting during the performance. It also means that you don’t wind up doing the sort of awful pouting band photos that a lot of bands do.
Gary: Plus it hides you dribbling on stage.
You like to dribble on stage?!
Gary: Yes. Yes I do. Every now and then.
Fair play.
Simon: First we made masks for the eyes - like bird masks and that, but just found them to be too impractical.
Gary: Yeah, they ruin your depth perception.
Simon: Yeah, you can’t see your guitar or your synth properly with a mask like that, but I think it’s important to have something which sets you aside visually from everyone else. It’s like when you see a band in a magazine and they resemble characters - it makes you wanna delve in a little bit more and find out more about them.
Dominic: It’s not even wanting to find out more about them - it’s recognizing that there’s a difference between the performer and the actual person.
Simon: True - it’s just interesting to, not put on a persona as such, but to create a different atmosphere. There’s also a lot of people who don’t do it visually but characteristically who when you meet them aren’t boisterous and are quite quiet but then when they get on stage they just change. They don’t need a mask or anything like that they just do it with their personalities and start going nuts and it really works.
Is Tropical began band life in the less than tropical and now notorious London squatter party scene, becoming renowned for putting on their own gigs - specifically in the now defunct Toilet Factory.
D.I.Y gigs are currently very hot shit indeed, with most major cities’ (Hello Leeds! Hello Bristol! Hello fair Liverpool!) turning their backs on the overpriced, poor sound quality of their local club based gig nights in favour of the cheapo, BYOB gig within a house party.
Simon: We wanted to create our own scene and not latch onto anyone else’s. When you’re wanting to play it’s just easier to put on your own gigs, especially when you get thrown on at half 7 in a shitty pub with a promoter who doesn’t do his job, you may as well just put your own on.
Any advice you care to impart with people considering throwing a gig in their house?
Simon: Make sure anything that can catch fire is wet.
Dominic: In a very sad way, thats probably one of the most vital ones.
Simon: Also, there’s like 40ft drops that we’d make sure to put mattresses at the bottom of - that’s an important one. And be prepared to find some weird stuff - like at one of our parties there was this turd in the very corner of the room. It was boxed off, and at no moment during that party could anyone have been left alone to have done it. There was always about a hundred people in that area.
What about when things get predictably way out of control?
Simon: Police have come into our parties before and just gone ‘alright, can you just try and keep it down?’ We’ll show them round to prove that nothing bad’s going on, and that it’s all above board, even though it’s probably not. So long as you’re not selling alcohol or anything like that -
Dominic : - Yeah, so long as you’re not making money it’s fine. It’s quite horrible sometimes, it can get to about half ten and there’s already hundreds of people there. We’d need to get our czech / polish housemates to sort out the riff-raff and then the police would turn up...
Simon: One time some big drug dealers turned up and wouldn’t leave, so one of our crazy housemates just started stripping off all his clothes and started to do a wank in front of them. They just ran out the building, they we’re like ‘this is just too fucking weird!’ and got out as fast as they could.
So you’re recommending that Purple Revolvers’ readership wank at party undesirables?
They laugh, shaking their heads apologetically, each mumbling their own version of ‘Yeah...suppose so’.
Oh Christ. We can already imagine a lot of ill-equipped, light weight indie boys turning up to A&E at 3.30 on a Sunday morning with the genital equivalent of a knee-capping following the publishing of this advice.
And with that frankly disturbing mental image stained boldly into our poor, long suffering brains, we give them a quick smooch and a hug goodbye and scamper impudently away wishing they’d become Bleached Hem's new BFF’s.
Sigh.
Listen to Is Tropical, look at some pretty pictures, buy merch and check out their full tour schedule on their Myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/istropical
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