SUPPORT: DEHD + THUS LOVE

Dry Cleaning are a band we’ve been desperate to have on our stage since they burst onto the scene with their distinctive sound. Deadpan lyrics and shill post-punk guitar licks had us hooked on the release of debut album ‘New Long Leg’ for ages, and now the follow up, ‘Stumpwork’ expands on that template with a bolder, more expansive sound. Recent single ‘Gary Ashby’ follows the travails of a beloved family tortoise lost in lockdown (“Have you seen Gary?“).

Having already started writing their second record before New Long Leg was released, they went back into the studio with John Parish with the plan to spend twice as much time on the follow up. Vocalist Florence Shaw improvised many of her lyrics straight on to the album, and they’re almost entirely observational. There is one quote from the artist Maggi Hambling on the woozy title track, text from an old Macintosh computer virus on ‘Don’t Press Me’, and snippets from the press cuttings library of archivist Edda Tasiemka scattered throughout.