The list of great pop songs inspired by Meghan Markle gained a new entry in July 2019 with the release of Magic of Meghan by London post-punk band Dry Cleaning. “I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly,” declared frontwoman, Florence Shaw in a dispassionate murmur. “This beautiful woman tripped and fell into my life.”
Magic of Meghan is funny yet also chock-full of ambivalence — a signature of Dry Cleaning, who put out their second album, Stumpwork, this week (‘stump work’ refers to a form of pleated embroidery). The mysteriousness builds and builds as Shaw delivers her deadpan lyrics and a Smiths-meet-The Fall riot of guitars piles in. Is Shaw praising Markle? Or is this a satirical swipe at the monarchy? Perhaps it is both at once.
It was like living on an alien planet after the Queen died. The BBC completely lost their s**t
“I never have a straightforward opinion about anything. Who does? It’s so hard to feel one very strong way about something. I feel like if you do it’s almost a bit of a red flag,” says Shaw, an art teacher turned performance poet whose wry wordplay is the piston that fires Dry Cleaning’s swerving indie rock. “In reality things are so chaotic, so nuanced. Life’s a mess, really. I try to veer toward that a bit in the writing. Things that are black and white frighten me a bit.”
“That’s probably a good fascism test,” adds guitarist Tom Dowse. “If you’ve got a strong feeling about anything, you’re fascist.”
Their opinions about royalty are certainly conflicted. “It’s a weird situation,” says Shaw. “I don’t think we should have a royal family.”
“It seems like an antiquated idea,” adds Dowse. “They like to spout all sorts of things: It brings so much tourism, like £500 million every year. Actually, the tourism is our heritage. The thing I don’t like about it ... you saw it when the Queen passed away ... Firstly, I’m always sceptical that people have these fervent feelings in any direction. You saw things like, ‘you can’t chain your bike to this bike rack today’ [because the Queen had died]. The ordinary people of England still have to go to work. I still have to go to work. I need things to be at least reasonable. So the fact there is a monarchy — I can deal with it. When they start acting unreasonably and expect you to get in line with that, I don’t like that.”
Seated alongside Shaw, drummer Nick Buxton nods in agreement. “It was like living on an alien planet after the Queen died. The BBC completely lost their s**t. It was like the country transformed into a totalitarian monarchy state, where everything was subject to the royal family. It was quite scary, actually. Very weird. The way they were behaving ... I felt like the whole country was losing its mind.”
With belters that combine the rhapsody of poetry and the propulsive angst of punk, it is no surprise Dry Cleaning have been likened to Fontaines DC, the Dublin group who draw on Joyce. Brendan Behan and Shane MacGowan. But while the Londoners can see where people are coming from with the comparison they’re not sure they buy into it completely.
“Not to dispel that — I’ve much more of an affinity with Gilla Band,” says Dowse, referring to the Irish quartet whose music blends ferocity and vulnerability. “It’s not even that we sound like that. It’s the spirit of it. Having met them a few times we get on well with them. They’re a band we admire.”
“It is always worth saying about bands like Fontaine D.C. — their incredible success.. we’ve got a lot to thank them for,” agrees Shaw. “The very basics of the form of what we do: the poetry side of it ... they’ve proven it to be something people are interested to hear. Something people spend money on. People buy their records. There is no doubt that that must have helped.”
Dry Cleaning are unlikely overnight sensations. In an industry where youthfulness is cherished, if not fetishised, they are cheerfully long-in-the-tooth. All in their 30s, Dowse, Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard spent more than a decade playing in hard-core and punk outfits (whilst holding down day jobs) and only went “full-time” as this new project took off. Shaw, meanwhile, is a newcomer who, a few short years ago, was fruitfully employed as an art teacher.
Shaw got to know Dowse when they were studying together at the Royal College of Art in London. She never thought of herself as a performer. However, Dowse saw stardust in her keen wit and way with words and invited her to start a band with him and his mates.
She initially demurred. But in 2017, after a painful break-up, she was feeling low and decided she needed a change. So she turned up at their rehearsal studio with a notepad of scribblings — musings from her diary, ideas written on her phone, the texts from the cartoons she would draw in her free time.
Things gelled immediately, Shaw’s droll observational lyrics providing a charming counterpoint to the zinging alternative pop. To their shock, they became an immediate success, with their 2021 debut New Long Leg charting at four in the UK and the group emerging at the head of a new movement of wry, funny rock acts that also included Wet Leg and Black Country, New Road.
Overnight acclaim took a bit of getting used to says Shaw. “It is a bit awkward. And I used to be really afraid,” she says of going on stage.
“When we would play gigs I used to be extremely nervous beforehand. As nervous as you can be and still actually do something. I have to remind myself that I don’t feel that way now. I have to remind myself I’ve come a long way in terms of being able to handle this kind of lifestyle. Because to begin with it was a bumpy ride. I’d just get nervous. Now it’s mostly that you’re afraid something is going to go wrong. Or you’re afraid of what people think of you. I still struggle with that sometimes. But in terms of things going wrong: a million things have gone wrong on stage now. And once that’s happened it deflates the anxiety. You’re like, ‘oh it’s fine.”
One connection they see with Gilla Band is that, while their music has a political edge, it isn’t necessarily spelt out in the lyrics. Instead, the “politics” flows from the tension between Shaw’s soft, expressive delivery and the jingling guitars and sudden tempo changes.
A case in point is new track Conservative Hell. If this were Fontaines DC or outspoken punk band Idles the song would very possibly descend into a (potentially hackneyed) rant about Fianna Fáil or Boris Johnson. Dry Cleaning avoids sloganeering, throwing the listener for a loop in the process.
It is such a unique strange little world, touring. It does not suit everyone ... I don’t think it suits anyone, actually
“Cleaning out the sink ... the main thing I do is moving bags from place to place,” whispers Shaw, lost in the dreary textures of everyday life. In the background, the rest of Dry Cleaning whip up a storm of urgent student disco rock.
“Some of the ‘politicise’ of what we do is about the contrast between the vocal and the music,” says Shaw. “And how that can sometimes be quite violent or jarring. Or uncomfortable. That’s a big part of it that not that many people mention. People talk about the words in isolation. All of those things on their own don’t mean very much. It’s the combination. It’s the places where they gel. And where it gets rougher. Conservative Hell introduces the idea of this dystopian reality we’re in at the moment, politicly-speaking — that being something we’ve all got going on in the background. That’s what we’re getting at more than direct political lyrics.”
That isn’t to say that they don’t have deeply-held political views. Creeping up on middle age, they’ve lived out practically their entire adult lives under a Conservative government in the UK. “When it was David Cameron in 2010 — that was depressing,” says Shaw. “If there’s a word for ‘fear of elections’ I’ve got it. The last few I’ve lived through have been horrific.”
New Long Leg was released during lockdown and they were pleasantly surprised that it took off so emphatically. With success comes a formidable workload, however: they’re booked for a long tour next year (including a date at Vicar Street in Dublin on February 14th). The pressure of life on the road is a much-discussed topic at the moment, with the likes of Arlo Parks and Sam Fender cancelling dates for the sake of their mental health.
Once you get to the point where you’re playing somewhere like Vicar Street, you have to take the attitude of, if life gives you lemons make lemonade
“I’ve got a lot of sympathy for someone struggling with their mental health on tour,” says Shaw. “It is such a unique strange little world, touring. It does not suit everyone, touring. I don’t think it suits anyone, actually. Basically, everybody has to bend themselves into a particular shape to do it. That can take a bigger toll on some than it does on others. Schedules are pretty crazy at the moment. Anyone needing to do that [cancel a tour], I have endless understanding. I think it’s pretty brave to cancel things sometimes. It is the tougher option.”
For Dry Cleaning, the philosophy is to hit the road with good intentions and trust that everything falls into place. “Once you get to the point where you’re playing somewhere like Vicar Street, you have to take the attitude of, if life gives you lemons make lemonade,” says Dowse. “There are complications to it. This is our first year of proper touring. We’ve survived it so far. We’ve got lots to learn about how to survive on tour. But this is, not to put too fine a point on it, how we make our money. We’re going to deal with it as it comes and do our best.”
Stumpwork is out now
