Dry Cleaning – Joy: 13th Floor New Song Of The Day
Secret Love, the third album from London outfit Dry Cleaning, finally sees the light of day this Friday. Today, the group release a fourth and final single, Joy, following predecessors ‘Hit My Head All Day’, ‘Cruise Ship Designer’ and ‘Let Me Grow and You’ll See The Fruit’.
Here is the blurb with more:
With lyrics initially pieced together from adverts in Virginia Tech University’s History of Food and Drink archive, Joy serves as a compassionate coach to those in desperate need of positivity and kindness. Like Stumpwork swansong ‘Icebergs’, it’s an optimistic sign-off for Secret Love with the parting words, “Don’t give up on being sweet.”
“Recently I’ve felt pessimistic about the world. The influence of what they call “the manosphere”, the genocide against Palestinians continuing despite huge protests, the rise of the racist Reform party in the UK, the promotion of AI in art and music. I wanted to try and stoke my drive to stay positive and spread softness and compassion. The wishes in the song have a naive quality.” – Florence Shaw
Joy is accompanied by BULLYACHE-choreographed visualiser starring the band’s very own Tom Dowse. He explains, “We were looking to get away from the longer form, narrative and impressionistic confines of a typical music video and give ourselves, friends and fans a way to respond to the music in a more expressive way that feels personal.
“We’ve seen the vastly different ways people behave at our shows – pogoing singalongs, full wig-outs, lone figures inhabiting the sound in their own private universe. With that in mind, we asked Bullyache to design a set of moves to each song on Secret Love as a starting point for ourselves and others to mimic or interpret them in a fun and idiosyncratic way, regardless of technical ability.”
Dry Cleaning – Secret Love
Secret Love is the finest expression yet of the profound friendships that created Dry Cleaning, between frontperson Florence Shaw, guitarist Tom Dowse, drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard. Here, the south London four-piece take their place in rock’s avant garde, catalysing the Reaganite paranoia of early 80s US punk and hardcore with the dry strut of Keith Richards, stoner rock,
dystopian degradation, playful no wave and pastoral fingerpicking, while Florence’s delivery, meticulously calibrated to her bandmates’ soundscapes, asserts her in a lineage of spoken-word artists stretching from Laurie Anderson to Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins. Producer Cate Le Bon likens the impression of listening to walking through a city; these 11 songs might also arrive like
distinct images in a gallery.
The record started life in Peckham rehearsal spaces, all four members writing, playing and responding to each other in the room: in Dry Cleaning, music and lyrics form an inseparable, generative whole. Then they bundled their demos in a suitcase and took them to musical friends with strong palettes to test and twist them in different directions. Secret Love evolved through affirming sessions at Jeff
Tweedy’s Chicago studio the Loft and explosive ones with Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios in Dublin, taking advantage of the sonic particulars of each space, and finally with Cate at Black Box in the Loire Valley. After interviewing various potential producers, they picked Cate – an esteemed solo artist who has also made albums for Deerhunter, Devendra Banhart, Wilco and
Horsegirl – for her unabashed positivity and openness. “Being in a room with them and hearing that vitality and life force that exists between them all, it’s such a unique expression,” she says.
Some acts would fear being subsumed by these other musical iconoclasts. Dry Cleaning wanted to push themselves harder than they ever had before and to explore the “radically different things that can be achieved by going to different people,” says Nick.
“We’re very confident about our identity,” says Florence. “It doesn’t seem to be possible to break it down.”
The opposite: this intentional incubation produced a singular, career-defining statement. “The most important thing is you have personality,” says Tom. It’s unmistakable in the off-kilter “party” energy that threads through even the darkest songs; how they push the cheeky no-wave of lead single ‘Hit My Head All Day’ somewhere so unexpected, powered by pistons of breathy synths and magnificent
cresting arcs of guitar. “It’s not a technical thing. It’s not really a sound thing. Once you know that about yourselves, you can apply it to anything.”
Dry Cleaning – Secret Love
A1. Hit My Head All Day
A2. Cruise Ship Designer
A3. My Soul / Half Pint
A4. Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy)
A5. Let Me Grow and You’ll See the Fruit
B6. Blood
B7. Evil Evil Idiot
B8. Rocks
B9. The Cute Things
B10. I Need Yo
B11. Joy
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