Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg

Pitchfork 86

Read Jillian Mapes’ review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(4AD)
Florence Shaw’s laconic spoken delivery is a highlight in a talented band making the quotidian exciting

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.

The Guardian 0

(4AD)
The everyday becomes poetic on this intensely original album of post-punk shape-shifting from the south London foursome

At a time when such key cultural theorists as the bloke from Maroon 5 are asking whether the very idea of bands has a future, the debut album from south London four-piece Dry Cleaning seems timely.

In front of inventive, ever-shifting, never-repeating post-punk shapes – courtesy of Nick Buxton (drums), Lewis Maynard (bass) and Tom Dowse (guitar) – Florence Shaw intones richly detailed lyrical fragments of everyday observations in a voice that’s more sprech than gesang. Taken in isolation, non sequitur lines such as “Someone pissed on my leg in the big Sainsbury’s/ If you’re an Aries/ Then I’m an Aries” might seem rather on the abstract side. But in this context, delivered deadpan against sinuous rhythms, they sound intensely poetic, and imbued with wit and melancholy.