DRY CLEANING Debut album New Long Leg out now, New single & video ‘Unsmart Lady‘
With their debut album New Long Leg out today, Dry Cleaning have shared a third new single, ‘Unsmart Lady’, and its official video.
‘Unsmart Lady’ is driven by a pleasing bone-rattling grunge groove and lyrics about body image. The band’s lyricist Florence Shaw says, “’Fat podgy, no make-up’ – I was thinking about these things that are supposed to be a source of shame about your appearance and wanting to use them in a powerful way. Just trying to survive when you feel knackered and put-upon and shit about yourself, but you say, ‘I don’t care what I’m supposed to be.’” The song’s Tilly Shiner-directed Hi8 analogue promo finds the band playing live in the humdrum surroundings of a south London carpet shop.
Dry Cleaning is Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals). Buoyed by the universal acclaim they received for 2019 EPs Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks and Sweet Princess, the south London foursome spent more and more of their lives on tour, refining their craft even further and developing a near-psychic knowledge of how to leave the right amount of space for each other in their songs. Their debut album New Long Leg, produced by John Parish, and featuring the singles ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’, ‘Strong Feelings’ and ‘UnsmartLady’ is more ambitious and complex, with Shaw’s spoken vocals tightly intertwined with the band’s restless instrumentals. Shaw extracts the most immense meaning from the most trivial things; she peppers the songs with a thousand tiny details, little witty asides about supermarkets, cupboards, beauty products and body parts add up to sonic landscapes that teem with the strange magic of ordinary life.
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
1. Scratchcard Lanyard
2. Unsmart Lady
3. Strong Feelings
4. Leafy
5. Her Hippo
6. New Long Leg
7. John Wick
8. More Big Birds
9. A.L.C
10. Every Day Carry
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg is out now
via 4AD / Rhythmethod
Praise for Dry Cleaning
“The most exciting guitar bands of recent times.” – The Wire
“Cerebral, caustic, exhilarating debut.” – MOJO ????
“Fresh, clever and endlessly intriguing, it adds up to a stellar debut.” – Record Collector ????
“Pleasingly grubby, and, in the best possible way, a tough act to follow.” – Uncut 8/10
“One of the most fascinating bands out there.” – DORK, Album of the Month ????
“Peerless peddlers of post-punk spoken-word ennui deliver another mini-masterpiece.” – The Sunday Times on ‘Strong Feelings’
“Florence Shaw evokes Jarvis Cocker at his most sardonic.” – The Guardian on ‘Strong Feelings’
“[Dry Cleaning] grafts post-punk grooves onto semi-absurdist poetry in a way that’s a little reminiscent of the great Scottish band Life Without Buildings, but Shaw’s vocals are uniquely, and a little menacingly, deadpan.” – The New York Times
“[‘Strong Feelings’ is] a bundle of contradictions, wringing pathos out of detachment, narrative out of non sequiturs.” – Pitchfork
“[‘Scratchard Lanyard’] has all the strange allure of their 2019 output, plus a little extra verve and polish courtesy of PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish.” – Rolling Stone
“”Dry Cleaning infuse post-punk with psychedelia on their new single ‘Strong Feelings.’ The track is tied together by lead vocalist Florence Cleopatra Shaw — her lyrics are a quiet tempest of passing thoughts that are pointless and profound, often at the same time.” – the FADER
“’Scratchcard Lanyard’ is a jumble of wordplay and wired tension. Bandleader Florence Shaw sounds disaffected and scattered, singing of bouncy balls and knitting circles and women in aviators firing bazookas, as she lands on one central refrain: ‘Do everything and feel nothing.’” – Stereogum
