Nancy Collinge
, April 1st, 2021 08:20
The debut album by Dry Cleaning is as oblique and unsettling as Hans Holbein s skull, finds Nancy Collinge
Photo by Steve Gullick
A couple of months ago during a bout of lockdown malaise, I was in my mum’s living room eating pie and chips and peas in front of the telly. The
Flog It credits rolled and shortly afterwards, an unremarkable looking middle-aged contestant on
Pointless professed his undying love for a South London band called Dry Cleaning. “Bravo sir” my internal monologue drawled, “The reincarnated John Peel is among us… I hope they do a question on flags today.”
With New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning lead the renaissance of British ‘monologue rock’
4/5
The arty Brighton quartet’s debut album is an engrossingly energetic fusion of the mundane, the surreal and the downright bizarre
New Long Leg is the debut album by the Brighton quartet Dry Cleaning
Credit: Pooneh Ghana
“I just want to put something positive in the world but it’s hard because I’m so full of poisonous rage,” drawls Florence Shaw in tones of exquisite boredom. While her band, Dry Cleaning, stir up a furious squall of post-punk energy on their debut album New Long Leg, their frontwoman, a former art-school lecturer, maintains an indifference to melody or emotion unmatched since Grace Jones’s 1980s pomp.
Dry Cleaning [L-R: Nick Buxton, Florence Shaw, Tom Dowse, Lewis Maynard] Photo Credit: Steve Gullick Praise for Dry Cleaning “The most exciting guitar bands of recent times.” – The Wire “Cerebral, caustic, exhilarating debut.” – MOJO .
Dry Cleaning Spit Back the Unending Noise of the World on New Long Leg
Published Apr 01, 2021
9
Florence Shaw writes a song like a bowerbird builds a nest, with an obsessive fixation for colourful garbage. On Dry Cleaning s debut full-length,
New Long Leg, Shaw weaves new language from journal pages and YouTube comments, advertisements, headlines, haircuts and spoiled food, turning ordinary detritus into something fantastical and useful. Bolstered by lush production from John Parish, Tom Dowse s riffs take on a new depth and Lewis Maynard and Nick Buxton s kinetic rhythms are accented with shakers, drum machines and handclaps.
New Long Leg is a bristling and steely-eyed statement of intent, introducing Shaw as an anthropologist of the everyday, or, as she deadpans on the sinewy Strong Feelings : Just an emo dead stuff collector / Things come to the brain.
Dry Cleaning album review: New Long Leg theskinny.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theskinny.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.