One of the most pleasing bits of listening to London band Dry Cleaning is trying to decipher the connection between sound and lyrics. Florence Shaw’s words sound so much like they are scattered fragments of a dream journal – this is something the UK’s stellar cadre of post-punk bands do well and frequently: taking tiny fragments of phrase and stitching them together, recontextualizing them into something greater as they build around them. But by comparison to a contemporary like, say, Squid, Dry Cleaning takes the notion to its most complete and most abstract. Shaw’s imagery tends more towards the personal and esoteric more than anything else, its varied and often puzzling origins making it all the more infectious to listen to.
Shaw and her three bandmates enter the stage at the Paradise Rock Club and take their places – she’s the only one with a microphone, the rest standing silent as bastions of instrumental intensity. To borrow some popular vernacular, everyone is very much “locked in” – the pace of the songs follows along with Shaw’s sparse delivery, but the intensity does not, making her a locus of control at the center of a whirling storm; and though she does occasionally take up a tambourine, like in the title track of their latest record, Stumpwork, it keeps in the vein of her keeping things centered while everyone else mounts an increasing whirlwind. Guitarist Tom Dowse plays just as structural a role here as Lewis Maynard and Nick Buxton on bass and drums, respectively.
‘Traditional Fish’ is an exemplary DC song, piecing together a walk through a high street and a grocery store by virtue almost entirely of signage, a quotidian jaunt immortalized forever in bold letters and tabloid headlines. Shaw accompanies her singing with deliberate hand movements, joining and unfolding them in front of her or clasping them together behind her back. ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’ proves to be one of their most enduring pieces judging by the room’s reaction, trading signs for Instagram story filters – it was the introduction to the band for many here to be sure, released on New Long Leg which saw them jump to another level of critical recognition. The beginnings of each verse elicit outsized crowd reactions despite the music continuing apace – though Buxton does make time for a little fill at the end.
During ‘Don’t Press Me’, Shaw takes time to comb through her long hair, and the song’s finish rings into ‘Magic of Meghan’ which employs a tape deck. Dowse motions with a raised fist to the audience, rousing cheers. Within the crowd, it’s funny how dancing, light headbanging, swaying, or simply absorbing stoically are all valid ways to enjoy the spectacle, the oblique subject matter somehow democratizing the wealth of responses throughout the room. There’s a huge swell of applause when the wall of guitar noise fades into the end of the main set and the band exit, Dowse tossing a towel onto his large stack of Orange amps, a brand I’ve noticed bands favor when they are particular about building up a big sound.
They return from a brief break to ‘Gary Ashby’ which is part of a trio of encore songs with ‘Bug Eggs’ and finally ‘No Decent Shoes for Rain’. Stumpwork and New Long Leg could be seen as a pair of sister albums, sort of like the EPs that preceded their release – they don’t represent an evolution so much as they do a complementary set, each with its own quirks and tendencies, but born of much the same impulses. Perhaps the idea of Dry Cleaning’s music is also embodied well by the odd cover of the newest album – which features its title written with hair on soap. It brings on the questions, “Why these items? Why this configuration?” A strange, surreal, funky, dreamlike assemblage of iconography, if it can be called that. They’re paradoxical, fun, strange songs that remain a mystery even as they unfold themselves completely before you.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
