Album Review: Dry Cleaning, Secret Love

Florence Shaw is South London’s most insouciant vocalist, and that’s saying something. Dry Cleaning’s previous two albums, New Long Leg (2021) and Stumpwork (2022), were built on her calmative spoken word (picture the Tube announcer lady reading Andy Warhol’s diary), standing amid post-punk maelstroms.

On Secret Love, the band dangle in deeper waters, resulting in their most accomplished effort. Shaw is still Shaw. On ‘Hit My Head All Day’, she’s dry and Foucauldian - “The objects outside the head control the mind / To arrange them is to control people's thinking”. ‘My Soul / Half Pint’ sees her burrow into an everyday aversion to cleaning to reveal internalised misogyny. Later, harmful online personalities are examined with humour and horror on ‘Evil Evil Idiot’ and ‘Blood.’

Encouraged by producer Cate Le Bon, Shaw sings more than ever, and the vocals on ‘Secret Love’ bring welcome shades of vulnerability. Bassist Lewis Maynard meanwhile, bolts the album with Minutemen-gone-Bootsy Collins grooves of punk grit and hypnotic funk.

Some of this record was made in Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio, and there is a whiff of Wilco from the guitars, particularly the dichotomy of fuzzy leads and jangly rhythms on ‘Let Me Grow And You’ll See’. The influence of sessions with Gilla Band are heard too on the doomy ‘Rocks’.

This sonic development clears the way for Dry Cleaning to excel at what they do best: unravelling the mundane into the existential. Is Shaw overthinking, spot on about the world, or both? At times it seems she’s not even sure. And yet, for all her deadpan, she remains empathetic. On closer ‘Joy’, she offers us a rose: “We’ll build a cute harmless world.”