It’s testament to how quickly the germination of Scene 2019 – a terrible name, but it doesn’t really have anything else to go by – has so radically transformed the genre formally known as indie, such that an EP featuring lyrics delivered as brittle non-sequiturs seems unremarkable.
And yet Dry Cleaning – a four-piece from south London made up of Lewis Maynard, Tom Dowse, Florence Shaw and Nick Buxton – have succeeded in doing just that, opening up a new vector amongst the vibrant, post-everything bricolage of ideas with their hashing together of abstract poetry and bittersweet tunes.
Prior to the arrival of Shaw – a university lecturer by day – the trio wrote instrumentally before she began delivering her words as prose in a deadpan but somehow exhilarating monotone that became the ideal vessel for their erratic pop.
It’s an approach that won their debut EP Sweet Princess many friends, but on Boundary Road Snacks And Drinks they also prove they can handle evolution without losing any of their essence. The effect is at its most potent on Viking Hair, Shaw’s almost carefree harmonising giving way to a wonky, uncomplicated set of overlapping lo-fi riffs that seem like they’re about to fall over at any minute. In possession of a chorus which stays head-lodged for days, the singer/talker claims it’s about objects of affection juxtaposed with objects found on the street, but the point is hard to find, and the song is so good that it hardly matters.
The quartet are not only smart (or naïve) enough to understand that these layers need to be picked apart slowly, the cheerful swing of opener Dog Proposal allowing listeners to process lines about wish fulfilment and Premier League football, while closer Sit Down Meal is a breakup song that manages to have distance and intimacy at the same time. The highlight though comes via the wonderfully ramshackle funk of Spoils, where the slightly dystopian verbiage covers boxset binging and weird sex, to be experienced not necessarily at the same time.
When put together out of sequence like this, we can easily see that the bits of stuff which make up our lives for the endless whirlpool of competing distractions they are, a tornado of nothing very important. Dry Cleaning tease this revelation from us with music that’s as ugly as it’s beautiful, like getting therapy without the shrink.
In almost any other year this century, that would be an extraordinary feat. In 2019? We’ll have to add it to the ever growing list of new genius.
