If Dry Cleaning’s previous records (‘New Long Leg,’ 2021 and ‘Stumpwork,’ 2022), were characterized by the accumulation of external debris; overheard conversations, advertising slogans, and the clutter of modern life, ‘Secret Love’ feels like the band finally sorting through the internal emotional inventory. The decisive factor is the production of Cate Le Bon, who acts as a softening agent on the band’s jagged post-punk architecture. Where there were once sharp angles and clinical distance, there now drifts a plush atmosphere of warped folk and submerged guitar tones.
The most striking transformation is in Florence Shaw’s delivery. Long celebrated for her sprechgesang (spoken word) style that treated lyrics like found objects, Shaw here steps tentatively but beautifully into melody. The title track, “Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy),” stands as the emotional centerpiece, driven by acoustic strumming and what has been described as a brightly lilting mandolin. Shaw shifts from her trademark deadpan verses into a genuine, fragile singing voice in the chorus that transforms the song from a narration into a confession. This is not a polish for radio play, but a narrative device: it suggests the narrator is no longer just a witness to the absurdity of the world, but a participant in its heartbreak. Lyrically, Shaw continues to mine the extraordinary from the mundane, though the domestic scenes now feel more claustrophobic and personal. On “My Soul / Half Pint,” a track developed during sessions at Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio The Loft, she narrates a love-hate relationship with cleaning, admitting “I don’t like to clean / I find cleaning demeaning” while elastic guitar lines dance around her like the very dusters she despises.
The album also engages in a meta-commentary on the band’s own reputation. On “Cruise Ship Designer,” Shaw adopts the persona of a professional longing for purpose, delivering the sly kicker: “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work.” It is a moment of dry wit that mocks the search for deeper meaning even as the album itself offers more emotional depth than anything they have produced before.
Musically, the band has never sounded more democratic. “Hit My Head All Day” signals the new era with machine-driven funk beats and a sleek, come-on groove. Lyrically, it tackles the theme of manipulation and right-wing misinformation, with Shaw observing how “objects outside the head control the mind.” Guitarist Tom Dowse trades his scratchy post-punk agitation for a broader palette that includes mandolins, looped delays, and “deliquescent” hooks that owe as much to 80s funk as they do to noise rock. The rhythm section of Lewis Maynard (bass), and Nick Buxton (drums), provides a pliable, dub-influenced foundation that allows these new textures to breathe deeply.
Yet, the band has not lost its edge; they simply wield it differently now. On “Evil Evil Idiot,” they plunge into a darker, more industrial territory. Here, the sound is one of corroded, ominous blues and clanging mechanized snares, serving as a heavy counterweight to the album’s softer moments and proving that Le Bon’s production hasn’t just polished their sound, it has deepened its shadows.
By synthesizing Reaganite paranoia with a deeply British sense of domestic absurdity, Dry Cleaning has created a work that captures the specific, fractured frequency of living in the 2020s by evoking the jagged, high-alert sound of early 1980s American hardcore and punk bands who were reacting to a world that felt increasingly dangerous and deceptive. ‘Secret Love’ is a record that argues for compassion as a radical response to a world defined by misinformation and shameful politics.
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