Dry Cleaning emerged more or less fully formed with a pair of 2019 EPs that showed just how much potential lay within their very specific take on post-punk. On Sweet Princess and Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks, the combination of
Florence Shaw's spoken-word meditations on everything from her dead cat to Meghan Markle (whom she championed years before Sussexit or interviews with Oprah) and her bandmates' surging instrumentals explored the strangeness of everyday life in bracing and revealing ways. Working with producer
John Parish, the band polishes their style like a blade on their debut album
New Long Leg, and they contrast
Shaw's understated delivery and their fired-up playing more sharply. When it comes to deadpan yet nuanced vocalists,
Shaw rivals
Kim Gordon and
Laurie Anderson. With the way she casts a critical eye on the world with erudite confidence, it only makes sense that she has a background as a university lecturer, and as she subverts the usual expectations of female vocalists to be emotive or decorative, her profound, mundane, and odd observations unite in a surreal blur. On "Scratchcard Lanyard," one of
New Long Leg's finest moments, she intones "I've come here to make a ceramic shoe...I've come here to learn how to mingle" and its putative chorus "Do everything/Feel nothing" with the same emotional weight, brilliantly conveying her feelings of ennui and overwhelm. If possible,
Shaw is even more sotto voce than before, adding to the conspiratorial feel to statements like "Don't cry/Just drive," on "Unsmart Lady," which proves she's got a way with an opening line. Her writing feels more intentional and poetic on
New Long Leg than the spontaneous outbursts of
Dry Cleaning's EPs, and when she asks "are there some kind of reverse platform shoes that make you go into the ground more and make you reach another level?" on the title track or describes paintings on "Strong Feelings," it's at once poignant and amusing. As distinctive as her style is, it never feels like
Shaw is trying too hard, in large part because the rest of
Dry Cleaning punctuates her musings expertly. They color her deadpan tones, giving them a tough, introspective, or regretful cast from song to song. Even more so than on their EPs, the band's music feels like a conversation between its members, full of rejoinders like
Lewis Maynard's nagging,
Wire-ish bass line on "Leafy" or the transporting solos guitarist Tom Dowse contributes to almost every track. And while
Dry Cleaning downplays pop music's most familiar techniques -- easily identifiable verses, choruses, and vocal melodies --
New Long Leg never really feels alienating, even when the band takes tension and release to extremes on "Every Day Carry." They know exactly what they're doing, and the risks they take result in a debut album that brings a fresh energy to post-punk that's equally challenging and rewarding. ~ Heather Phares