Album Review: Secret Love by Dry Cleaning

Adventurous, playful and, at times, aggressive, their third album throws their own carefully defined and beautifully curated rulebook out of the proverbial window With their 2021 John Parish-produced debut album New Long Leg, south Londoners Dry Cleaning emerged as a rather unique proposition that threatened to become a novelty: incredibly droll, almost vampiric sprechgesang (more sprech than sang) vocals, delivering lyrics that seemed to be transcriptions of conversations from various random daytime TV shows, against a backdrop of post-Sonic Youth-ian art rock, with a hint of dub and a pinch of post-punk. It was only through the sheer force of will behind songs like Scratchcard Lanyard, Her Hippo, and Unsmart Lady (not forgetting earlier EP tracks like Conversation and Magic Of Meghan) that prevented them becoming a novelty act and instead led to them becoming one of the world's most exciting bands. This unique flavour wasn’t accidental, but something that the band's instrumental core – Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass), and Nick Buxton (drums) – had spent a decade refining in various South London projects before recruiting Florence Shaw to do her thing over their increasingly muscular sound.

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With talker and singer Florence Shaw's absurdist imagery capturing feelings of modern unease and pointlessness more memorably than any of her peers. While that style of sprechgesang has become less fashionable among new bands, Dry Cleaning continue to refine and perfect their version of it, producing new gems and weird insights along the way. What stops that sound from becoming tired in Dry Cleaning's hands is the unusual warmth that they bring to it.

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'I make sure there are hidden messages in my work', goes Florence Shaw's now-familiar deadpan from the POV of a cruise ship designer, a profession so absurdly specific you question if Dry Cleaning didn't already have a song on this subject. Whether Shaw is merely vocalising the inner monologue of her chosen character, or hinting towards the riddle of her enigmatic lyrics, being able to reflect your own meaning in her gnomic intonations is their strength. On the band's third full-length, Shaw returns to her usual writerly concerns while expanding her methods of delivery.

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“Many years have passed but you’re still charming”, intoned Dry Cleaning’s frontperson Florence Shaw back in 2020 on their breakout song ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’. Nothing has changed since then - three albums in and almost a decade in business, and their signature conundrum-heavy, collage-like songs are still in place, yet now their sonic palette has become richer and more sprawling, thanks to Cate Le Bon on board as producer. After a breakthrough debut, ‘New Long Leg’, their sophomore record, ‘Stumpwork’ , pushed the boundaries of their sound, but mostly felt like a more sophisticated repetition of an already well-established formula and, this time, came without big hits or memorable lines like “Fat podgy / Non make-up” or “It’s a Tokyo bouncy ball / It’s an Oslo bouncy ball”.

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Where 2021 debut 'New Long Leg' was Dry Cleaning establishing themselves and 2022 follow-up 'Stumpwork' was them refining their sound, this third effort 'Secret Love' finds the outfit taking a suitable side-step, to find a sweet spot between the familiar and the new. It wouldn't be Dry Cleaning without the deadpan delivery of Florence Shaw - and her often stream-of-consciousness lyrical turns - and ultimately the record's appeal is, naturally, determined by one's preexisting regard for this and the wiry post-punk sounds over which she vocally meanders. But, for those with such predilections, the band opting for Cate Le Bon to take on production duties offers an - if not fresh, then comfortably renewed - extra layer to dive into.

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"I make sure there are hidden messages in my work," sing-speaks Florence Shaw on Cruise Ship Designer, the second track on this third album by London art-rock quartet Dry Cleaning. Shaw is taking on the persona of a nautical entrepreneur who is convinced their work has social value. But it's a line that rings true given a certain indecipherability and the need to de-code has been a feature of Dry Cleaning's allure.

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