Dry Cleaning is as London-based band that takes the common post-punk idea of pairing a solid groove with speak singing vocals, and pushes it further. They start out with the drums and the bass laying down the foundational beat, a bright and bare guitar riffing and accenting the melody, and add to that the vocalist Florence Shaw's almost spoken word narrative based on bits and pieces of found text, whether it is snippets of phone conversations, YouTube comments or what sounds like window signs she sees at shops lined along a street. Between the airtight execution of the three-piece ensemble, the power of the grooves, Shaw's bone dry delivery and the layers of humor packed into this exercise makes the formula work so much better than one would normally expect.
