Words —
jeff kennedy
Dry Cleaning performed at The Hollywood Avondale, a distinguished heritage venue with lovely staff and glorious acoustics. Womb opened the proceedings with an engaging dream-synth-pop set that was appreciated warmly by the audience.
A post-punk band from South London, Dry Cleaning popped onto my radar with their third record, Secret Love, reviewed as album-of-the-week in a major British newspaper, noting their “haunting, peculiar brilliance”. Secret Love turned up again in an audiophile magazine column, highlighting Cate Le Bon’s brilliant production of an excellent musical performance. The latest album builds on the band’s unmistakable sound, anchoring Florence Shaw’s deadpan laser-focused spoken-word observations about the tiny and mundane things that punctuate, challenge, and define our daily lives.
Anticipation built in the capacity crowd as the road crew swapped things around for Dry Cleaning. “Happy birthday to you…” opened the proceedings with ‘Sliced by a Fingernail’, followed by ‘Blood’ from the new album, and the crowd-pleaser ‘Gary Ashby’ from 2022’s Stumpwork. After laying down four songs back-to-back, guitarist Tom Dowse welcomed the audience and introduced the band members, promising to play the whole of the new album, and hoping that we all liked it… and the crowd went wild.
Working through the same 20-song setlist that treated a Wellington audience the night before at Meow Nui, Dry Cleaning showcased a deeply fun togetherness and powerful energy. The whole affair is underpinned by one of the world’s tightest rhythm sections, supporting layers of hugely physical guitar craft and creating the perfect space for Florence Shaw’s incredibly controlled scrupulously detached vocal delivery and perfectly managed gestures and expressions.
Heading into the end of the show, ‘Cruise Ship Designer’ (“I’m a cruise ship designer; I’m striking while the iron is hot”); ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’ (“Many years have passed but you’re still charming”); and ‘Evil, Evil, Idiot’ (“I don’t want to be lectured; I like to burn my food up”), all picked up the energy and had the crowd dancing, singing, and enraptured. Closing out with ‘Conversation’, generously extended by an improvised and intricate guitar-and-wall-of-noise trance-platform, the night wrapped up with ‘Hit My Head All Day’.
Despite the studied indifference and often arresting lyrics, there’s really no need to worry about Florence, or about her band – they are all captivating, engaging, happy, and absolutely terrific. Auckland was lucky, grateful, and really showed up to enjoy and appreciate an incredible contemporary post-punk band making important music and telling important stories about our lives and our world.
Go and buy all the Dry Cleaning records, and do get along to the other shows in the Strange Universe winter series.
