“You’re just what England needs / You’re going to change us,” Florence Shaw intones on Dry Cleaning’s 2019 track Magic of Meghan. It’s a song she’s been thinking about “quite a bit” since the Oprah interview with the Duchess of Sussex aired. “I was just interested in her and trying to forget about a breakup. But I did have an ominous feeling about Meghan – a sense that it was going to go horribly wrong.”
The south London-based quartet’s songs are often eerily prophetic – creating something surreal, touching and hilarious that captures the absurdity of modern life. Their sound marries agitated post-punk with Shaw’s sardonic spoken-word lyrics – think Magazine fronted by a Beat poet who talks about phone scams and Travelodges.
The story goes – according to early interviews – that long-term friends guitarist Tom Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard and drummer Nick Buxton decided to form the band in 2017 after a drunken karaoke session. “Do you want us to stick to that?” asks Dowse. “Because it isn’t really true. We sang Minerva by Deftones together, which was a bonding experience, but I don’t know if it really ignited the desire to be in a band … ”
A jamming session ensued, and they spent the next few months writing songs and trying to find a singer who wasn’t the usual cliched frontperson. Step forward the band’s friend Shaw, a visual artist who had no musical experience. From the first rehearsal in Maynard’s mum’s garage it was clear that she was the missing link.
The band have since developed a “near-psychic understanding” of how to leave the right amount of space for each other in their songs. “It’s almost like you’re slowing down time and there’s a conversation between us,” says Dowse. Drawing from wider, weirder influences (they mention everyone from Black Sabbath to Augustus Pablo) than on their first two EPs, they wanted their debut album to “sound like its own little world”.
That feeling is only enhanced by Shaw’s muted delivery of surreal lyrics. The album, New Long Leg, sees her revelling in the minutiae of life – particularly food. You’ll hear a whole supermarket’s worth of references on the album, from Müller Corners to pasta bakes: “Recently a journalist asked: ‘So, what’s the deal with the food?’ Now every time I hear the songs I’m like: ‘Fucking hell, there’s food every other line.’”
As lockdown ends, the band are turning their thoughts from the kitchen to the stage. “We did a photoshoot recently and performed the whole album to this photographer who didn’t ask, or want us to,” laughs Maynard. “It was the closest we’ve had to an audience in ages.” Not quite an audience with royalty, but they’ll take it for now.
New Long Leg is out 2 April
