You never expect to find yourself bopping around the kitchen to a song about a fictional cruise ship designer, but that’s where Dry Cleaning are taking us in 2026. The South London four-piece are back with their third record, Secret Love, enlisting the help of Cate Le Bon on production for a fresh take on their trademark post-punk sprechgesang and sharp observations.
Secret Love moves smoothly between a darker, more intense sound to softer, intimate moments. Blood is one of the most striking and perhaps the most transparent in its lyrics. Deconstructing the modern inevitability of witnessing atrocities half a world away on our screens, singer Florence Shaw laments our own sense of complicity as she sings, “Blood on my skin and hands and nails, and in my eyes as well / I try to see”. Evil Evil Idiot continues this darker tone with ominous instrumentation and lyrics about raw meat, carcinogens and chemicals.
Balancing this intensity are cuts like The Cute Things and the titular Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy), painting a more personal picture. Joy ends the album with a kick, reflecting on the radical act of finding happiness in a dystopian world.
The deadpan delivery of Shaw’s lyrics makes analysis a tricky thing. In the aforementioned Cruise Ship Designer, she concludes the song with the statement “There are hidden messages in my work”. Is it a less-than-subtle hint for the listener to look deeper into the songs? Does it poke fun at those who read too much into the things? These more absurd moments contrast the more straight-to-the-point lyrics; Blood reflecting on war and complicity, or My Soul / Half Pint touching on domestic burden. Perhaps the hidden message is that, like the cruise ship designer, we should stop overthinking everything.
So sit back and enjoy the album. Shaw’s straight-faced delivery pairs beautifully with her bandmates’ intricate guitars and grooving basslines throughout. Secret Love is a profoundly modern album - puzzling, but endearingly so.
