Dry Cleaning: Stumpwork (4AD/digital outlets)

In 2021 when we reviewed New Long Leg, the arresting debut album by this London quartet, we put it in the lineage of Eighties post-punk, Wire, John Cooper Clarke and Kae Tempest among others.

We noted that while Dry Cleaning had touchstones there, they came up with something which was uniquely witty and observant.

When we included it in our Best of Elsewhere 2021 list we said, “Witheringly smart, emotionally detached post-post-punk outta South London where nagging guitar, relentless grooves, sonic challenges and earthy spoken-word collide. Imagine mid-period Marianne Faithfull fronting Wire with guitar solos in the manner of a constrained, British Tom Verlaine”.

So naturally we are up for this follow-up, again recorded with producer John Parish (Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey etc) in his Rockfield studio, Dry Cleaning take their sound and Florence Shaw's spoken word musings into some very different direction, right from the moody, minimalist and haunting opener Anna Calls From the Arctic (where “it's either scientists, or people who are mining or dog sled people”).

As a soundscape it draws you right in to an album which fires off from Shaw's sometimes emotionally flat, sometimes witty, sometimes mundane observations, supported by the superb musicianship of the band which again throws you back to 1982 but also manages to sound contemporary.

You may have heard some of the sound before (Wire, Magazine, the Banshees, Johnny Marr) but never quite like this or in this context.

The slightly sleazy sounding No Decent Shoes for Rain opens with, “New Zealand, France, Switzerland, Northampton, Exeter, Egypt. It won't do to cry about it. I've seen a rat. I've seen a guy cautioned by police for rollerblading. Let's smoke and drink and get fucked I don't know. Let's eat pancake . . . . I'm bored but I get a kick out of buying things”.

Shaw isn't railing against conformity but just how bizarre the modern world has become (“I've seen your arse but not your mouth, that's normal now . . . what is this toxic sludge? I don't know”).

A similar menace runs through Hot Penny Day: “I guess I don't ever ask for what I want. I see male violence everywhere . . . Hazmat suit, yeah, health first. Are these еxposed wires all good near thе steam?”

Songs here are concise (Gary Ashby just 2.10, Don't Press Me 20 seconds shorter) or stretched out: No Decent Shoes near six minutes, Liberty Log with what could be post-punk Frippertronics (“it's a weird premise for a show, but I like it”) almost seven.

Dry Cleaning could have repeated the winning formula of their debut but while still sounding like the same band there is something deeper and wider going on this time out.

On Kwenchy Kups, Shaw says, “things are shit, but they're going to be okay”.

They certainly are.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here