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<\/p>\nDry Cleaning – Secret Love<\/p>\n
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4AD<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s a moment on Cruise Ship Designer, one of the more playful tracks on Dry Cleaning\u2019s third album, where it seems like singer Florence Shaw is finally getting something off her chest, something that might be deeply relevant to the band\u2019s creative process. It\u2019s a declaration that she makes just as the song clangs to a standstill, almost obscured by the grinding guitars: \u201cI make sure there are hidden messages in my work,\u201d she states boldly.<\/p>\n
Ever since the London four-piece released their debut EP Sweet Princess in 2019, there has been a temptation to approach Dry Cleaning\u2019s records as a puzzling cryptic crossword or surreal Wordle cut-up, turning each song into a breadcrumb trail (as their distant spoken-word ancestors Slint might have it). \u201cIt\u2019s a Tokyo bouncy ball\/It\u2019s an Oslo bouncy ball\/\u2028It\u2019s a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball,\u201d Shaw intoned\u00a0\u2028over the ticker tape fall of Scratchcard Lanyard<\/a>, a track from their 2021 debut New Long Leg<\/a>; there are whole mimeographed pamphlets waiting to be written\u00a0\u2028about Hot Penny Day<\/a> or No Decent Shoes For Rain<\/a>from\u00a0\u20282022\u2019s Stumpwork<\/a> (named \u2013 of course \u2013 after a form of\u00a0\u202817th-century embroidery).<\/p>\n Yet Shaw\u2019s statement about \u201chidden messages\u201d isn\u2019t as explicit\u00a0\u2028as it seems. Cruise Ship Designer is an absurdist depiction of a supposed alpha male, Shaw inhabiting the character of a familiarly deluded man blustering about the importance of his work. The idea of \u201chidden messages\u201d inside the anodyne hulk of a ship is pleasingly ridiculous \u2013 would that involve pentangle-shaped portholes? Phallic quoits? \u2013 but it\u2019s also a sign of the character\u2019s lack of self-awareness, the conviction that nobody can see through him.<\/p>\n More tellingly, though, nothing is really hidden in Dry Cleaning\u2019s music. They\u00a0\u2028might be opaque \u2013 even occasionally incomprehensible \u2013 but their songs are still made to let a lot of light through. Shaw\u2019s lyrics, often consisting of fragments found\u00a0\u2028or overheard, might sometimes be bewildering, but they aren\u2019t shifty, furtive, deliberately confusing. They are expertly collaged to replicate complicated states of mind: a moment of sadness, a slide into alienation, a shudder of love or horror.\u00a0\u2028In fact, there are moments when Secret Love seems almost dangerously thin-skinned, unprotected, a tortoise without a shell\u00a0\u2028(a moment, please, for Stumpwork\u2019s unhappy lost reptile Gary Ashby<\/a>).<\/p>\n Let them in, and the culminative impact of Dry Cleaning songs is often suddenly and surprisingly overwhelming, pushing at emotional pressure points you never knew existed. Their newly expansive working methods have created more space in their music without diffusing their curious tang: they recorded Secret Love with Gilla Band in Dublin, at Wilco<\/a>\u2019s studio The Loft in Chicago (Jeff Tweedy<\/a> adds guitar to the brilliant domestic rebellion of My Soul\/Half Pint) and ultimately, with the record\u2019s producer Cate Le Bon<\/a> in the Loire Valley.<\/p>\n Dry Cleaning illustrated exclusively for MOJO by Cold War Steve.<\/p>\n Like guitarist Tom Dowse, Shaw was originally an art lecturer until Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard and drummer Nick Buxton lured her into the life of a musician, and like her drawings, her lyrics aim to catch a figure, a moment, a feeling, in a few load-bearing lines. Let Me Grow And You\u2019ll See The Fruit, for example, a pretty looping folk tune reminiscent\u00a0\u2028of Movietone, slowly blooms into a devastating portrait of loneliness. Shaw is ghosted by a saxophone, then her own voice, the difference between desired solitude and unwanted isolation blurs. \u201cNo one coming along with a video call or a survey or a dick\u00a0\u2028pic or a loud bang or a smell that comes up,\u201d she says, like Alan Bennett if he\u2019d dabbled in language poetry\u00a0\u2028in the \u201980s.<\/p>\n As the song ends, she compares herself to \u201ca shell fallen down and dead\/Curled, like a heavy, downy baby goose\u201d. It\u2019s inexplicably heartbreaking, an image of something that can\u2019t hold its own head up against the weight of the world. That vulnerability is mirrored on the spare, stripped-wire desire of I Need You, clarinet and synth pulling the song\u2019s nerves to the surface: \u201cI\u2019m waiting inside a talcum powder box\/For you to lift the lid and discover me\/And lift me gently into your palm.\u201d<\/p>\n While it\u2019s easy to fixate on the lyrics and Shaw\u2019s compelling delivery \u2013 ostensibly glassy but full of subtle cracks and nuance \u2013 the musicians are also speaking volumes, in constant restless dialogue. They can sound witty and capricious or profoundly menacing; the guitars and drums that blacken the infernal trip-hop of Evil Evil Idiot \u2013 Shaw turning modern \u2018wellness\u2019 narratives into something sick \u2013 drag Death Valley \u201969 to suburban south London. Hit My Head All Day sounds like a Human League disintegration loop; The Cute Things trails off in a stadium-rock guitar solo that sounds like bravado in the face of romantic doubt. Cruise Ship Designer, meanwhile, creaks and heaves like an iceberg, call-and-response backing vocals disappearing into the mist.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a hypervigilance in these songs, a tension, an alertness to the threat of violence, the overload of social media, the press of dark forces. Starting like a skip-salvaged floppy disc of R.E.M. demos, Joy\u2019s sweet jangle forms a defiant rejection of the manosphere misogyny: \u201cWe\u2019ll build a cute harmless world\/Don\u2019t want one from you, cult.\u201d Blood deals with having the world\u2019s horrors broadcast into your home, before zooming in on a comment Shaw heard from two girls on a bus in her \u201cturbo-gentrified\u201d London neighbourhood. \u201cThe people in house at the moment are renting\/So it\u2019s all good, anytime, we can move in.\u201d Shaw was shocked. \u201cI just thought, How can you discard that side of the story?\u201d she tells MOJO. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond me, really.\u201d<\/p>\n Not much is beyond these songs, however: the tenderness that pokes through Secret Love (Concealed In A Drawing Of A Boy);\u00a0\u2028the scratchy Magazine fury of Rocks; the yearning for childhood innocence in a world of non-stop experience that accompanies\u00a0\u2028Hit My Head All Day. In expanding their world, Dry Cleaning have lost none of their distinctive edge, their idiosyncratic set-up proving to be endlessly elastic, as big as they want, as small as they need,\u00a0\u2028to capture the chaos of the world. No hidden messages here:\u00a0\u2028Secret Love is a wonderful record.<\/p>\n Secret Love is out January 9 on 4AD.<\/p>\n ORDER: Amazon<\/a> | Rough Trade<\/a> | HMV<\/a><\/p>\n Track Listing:<\/p>\n 1. Hit My Head All Day![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Dry-Cleaning-Cold-War-Steve.jpg\"\/)
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2. Cruise Ship Designer
3. My Soul \/ Half Pint
4. Secret Love (Concealed In A Drawing Of A Boy)
5. Let Me Grow And You\u2019ll See The Fruit
6. Blood
7. Evil Evil Idiot
8. Rocks
9. The Cute Things
10. I Need You
11. Joy<\/p>\n
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