The London band Dry Cleaning offer up something here on their latest EP that is expertly pitched and surprisingly melodic (at least in spots). Sweet Princess, out via It's Okay, and the link below, is a smart release, one that rarely slips into simply being clever. I dig that.
The sung-spoken vocals of Florence Shaw anchor this stuff, and give numbers like "Conversation" and "Phone Scam" real power. The cuts, spiky and angular, are throwbacks to the earliest recordings of bands like The Fall, The Blue Orchids, and Subway Sect. And yet, there's something forward-looking here too, even if the bristly post-punk underpinnings of each track are retro in the best possible way. The other players here -- Lewis Maynard, Tom Dowse, and Nick Buxton -- carry Shaw's unique vocals forward on a bed of spiky hooks, and throbbing rhythmic lines, such that "Good Night" is bracing and utterly unlike anything else you've heard so far in 2019. "New Job" was the highlight here for me, seeing as how the spry guitar-hook and melody made me think of Buzzcocks and Elastica. Not saying that the tunes of Dry Cleaning are New Wave or Britpop, but but that there are enough bits here buried in these rough gems to please fans of those genres and others.
Sweet Princess is out now via It's Okay and the link below.
More details on Dry Cleaning via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Hanna-Katrina Jedrosz]