Album Review: Dry Cleaning, New Long Leg

In equal parts brilliant and bizarre, Dry Cleaning have established themselves as the premier piss-takers of post-punk, with the release of New Long Leg, their eagerly anticipated debut album.

Guided by a wry, but never too smug, sense of humour, the South London group have stepped up the captivating sound found on their 2019 EPs Sweet Princess and Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks – to present a project that’s more ambitious and compellingly original in both sonic direction and lyrical content.

It’s in the perfect juxtaposition of their increasingly experimental soundscape – particularly on closing track ‘Every Day Carry’ – and Florence Shaw’s deadpan spoken delivery that the real appeal of the record lies. Shaw’s lyrics playfully poke fun (“Someone pissed on my leg in the big Sainsbury’s,” she announces out of the blue on ‘John Wick’), but retain a poetic quality that appears effortless. Amidst a movement of post-punk acts who tend to take themselves very, very seriously, Dry Cleaning take a leaf out of Girl Band’s book, by focusing intensely on the seemingly mundane – hot dogs, Antiques Roadshow, cleaning fat out of the grill pan – until it transforms and transcends into something else entirely. Shaw mines beautiful absurdity, and sometimes tragedy, out of these painfully ordinary items and occurrences – allowing New Long Leg to serve as a powerful exploration of dullness and ennui, without ever fully giving into those concepts itself.