Artist Profile: Retail Drugs
Retail Drugs, the tape-grounded recording project of Laveda founder Jake Brooks, has represented an outlet to its innately creative founder since its inception during the COVID-19 Pandemic, and, with the release of the second album under the alias, Brooks is now ready to turn a new leaf, taking on a more expansive sound while maintaining the simplicity and centrality that has made Retail Drugs a special project.
As a child, Brooks’ interest in music was innate. He fondly remembers the first time he got excited listening to music: while he was listening to a Backstreet Boys CD on his Walkman. While his dad had a heavy taste for dance music, it was music that pushed the energy through a different method that appealed to him, transcribing soundscapes that were unique compared to what he had been accustomed to.
From there, his discovery of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs made him feel, for the first time, like there was something he could replicate on his own: a sound that felt both tangible and attainable to a young Brooks. After learning the double bass in orchestra at school, he picked up an electric bass guitar, playing in multiple cover bands throughout his years in middle school and high school.
Yet, as he entered college and began attempting to write his own songs, shaking off the rust inherent to performing covers, he discovered his penchant for a shockingly wide variety of sounds. As his skill-set grew to match his ambition, his creative energy abounded.
From the ashes of the first band he joined in college rose Laveda, whose sounds spanned from the scraping rhythms of metal to the catchy melodies of indie pop to the submerged tones of shoegaze. Laveda quickly found great success with Brooks writing a significant portion of their songs, and, yet, a personal tragedy in Brooks’ life came close to shattering his creative foundations.
“During the pandemic, my mom passed away from breast cancer… I kind of stopped writing for a while because, just adapting to that, it made writing feel different, and that's kind of where Retail Drugs came from. I was writing in this new way, so I couldn't really write in the same way I'd written before.”
Therefore, Retail Drugs served a dual purpose; it both gave his new scope of lyricism a home and provided him with a constant outlet through which to express himself. The project was, in short, a space for experimentation and, in many ways, a sort of playfulness for Brooks.
The two albums released under the Retail Drugs moniker thus far, namely i love you so ! and rECKless dRIVing, represent a variety of songs recorded in the earliest days of his creative outbursts under his new venture. Ranging from bluesy to heavy, strumming rock, from subdued vocals to infernal wailing, the tracks across the two projects signify not only the creative ambitions of Brooks but also a diverged stream of pure creativity.
The fact that the songs are recorded to tape is no minor detail either. According to Brooks, recording on tape provides both an immediacy and a set of restrictions that inject a unique quality into Retail Drugs as a project.
“Everything is recorded by me; it's made the cheapest way possible. But it's also a practice of me trying to, one, get better at recording and two, to practice ‘first thought, best thought’. I try to do everything as quickly as possible when I'm recording for Retail Drugs… The tape offers a nice balance… and I feel like the simplicity adds a lot more enjoyment for me.”
Now, with the second Retail Drugs album having been released on August 1st, Brooks already has another album under wraps: one which he says is far more experimental and electronic than his past ventures. Yet, even as he takes on a more expansive soundscape, it is certain that Retail Drugs will continue to be a unique and effervescent project, born from the depths of an intrinsically creative mind.
