Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg | Best Albums Of 2021 So Far uk.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from uk.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last modified on Fri 2 Apr 2021 04.05 EDT
The easy thing to do with Dry Cleaning is to concentrate on Florence Shaw and her laconic, subdued, spoken delivery of lyrics that are almost surreal in their quotidian blankness. But that does a disservice to the other three members of the band, because New Long Leg is the work of a terrifically focused group, whose version of post-punk is far more varied than it might at first appear. Tom Dowse has a knack for insinuating guitar lines – the cascading riff of Unsmart Lady; the simple pattern that underpins Strong Feelings – and sometimes the hooks come from the basslines of Lewis Maynard. There’s not a revolution here: the rulebook of the four-piece indie band is not being rewritten, but even with a conventional singer, singing conventional lyrics, Dry Cleaning would be a superior example of the kind.