Track title: You're Welcome
Taken from: Previously unreleased
Release date: 6th September 2010
Catalogue number: BSM089.36


Tropics have been around in one form or another for quite a while now, and having settled on a new lineup featuring no less than three ex-members of Meet Me In St Louis, things just seem to be getting more exciting by the day. Guitarist and vocalist Jodie Cox answered a few questions for us...

How would you describe Tropics to someone who hasn't previously heard your music?
Amazing. Just kidding. To be honest I'm not sure. I'd like to think it's eclectic within the remit of the influences we have as well as our general tastes but that's still pretty vague. Sorry. Ummm...It's primarily 'rock music' on a broad sense I suppose. We love stuff from hardcore to northern soul to the various forms of punk, riffs, noisiness and melody in all those things. I guess we just try to put that all together somehow and get the swing of it right. We feel like we're getting there too. Just lucky we're so good looking to get us by for now.

The band has been through a few lineup changes since the start and now features no less than three ex-members of Meet Me In St Louis. How did that come to be?
This could take a while, bit ill try to keep it as brief as i can. I think that at the beginning of last year it became apparent that things weren't working as well as they should have been with everyone in the band at that time. Not that we weren't friends or anything, just that the music wasn't progressing probably as easy as it should have been. This departure of the original line-up happened bit by bit. I had moved to Guildford and ended up hanging out / catching up with Paul (MMISL drummer) as he lives there he and I went to the same college and used to play together.

Robin (original drummer, now of Male Bonding) wanted to leave so I was chatting with Paul about it and he offered to get involved. It was just natural playing together so was a welcome transition. Shortly after, Matt (now of Thee Fair Ohs) and Dan (now of Cold Pumas) also had a lot more going on with their other more local bands and I think was more of what they wanted to do so it made sense for them to go do that. No hard feelings and we're all still tight friends.

When it was just Paul and I, we were originally gonna just have us two write everything and then get folks in to play live when that was possible, so that we could keep it sparse and not stressful at all. We needed some help completing a song, needing someone to play bass and Paul suggested getting Lewis in to help us out. That went well and we asked him if he was into doing it on a more permanent level and thankfully he was. We were talking about getting another guitarist and laughed about getting Oli in, only because it would seem crazy having three guys from MMISL in the band. Similar to the situation with Lewis, we asked him to help out and he came down. It turned out to be pretty awesome so we asked him to stay on too, thus completing the line up. It's been pretty fun and easy going with everyone since and lots of fun writing together. Kinda different to what we've all done before but not the biggest departure. I'm excited about the songs and ideas we're working on and hope we can translate these ideas publicly as we envision them.

As well as Tropics, you also play in Narrows, a trans-atlantic band. Do you find that a difficult balance or does the time apart work in your favour?
The part time nature of Narrows is actually great. We don't get sick of the songs or each other (yet) so it's perfect. That band is a lot of fun and it means I get to see my friends over there a lot more than I probably would otherwise. We (Tropics) all have things going on outside of the band and we just make it work where we can and don't really put pressure on ourselves or each other to do it. We're not in a hurry to do things by certain deadlines or anything at the moment so it keeps the progressive flow at a nice pace.

What plans do Tropics have for the rest of the year?
We have some shows coming up with our friends Holy State that we're looking forward to and just generally trying to play where and when we can. We've also been writing lots and are roughly aiming to have enough material for record that we hope to record early next year for a release shortly after. If someone out there is really into records with nice packaging and has more money than sense, please feel free to get in touch.


Website: www.myspace.com/tropicsmusic