The large industrial fan set into the wall to the rear of the stage is supposed to swirl dry ice around the band. Were it working, it might serve as a subtle echo of the process of dry cleaning itself. Instead, the venue’s fan is on the blink. “Just a big, smoking hole,” notes Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw with wry amusement. It sounds like a future lyric.
The band ease into Her Hippo, a standout from their 2021 debut album, New Long Leg. “I’m smiling constantly,” Shaw intones, magnificently stony-faced. By contrast, Tom Dowse’s guitar is eager, ringing and exploratory, then increasingly anxious, ratcheting up the tension as Shaw keeps her impassive cool. While Dowse and hirsute bassist Lewis Maynard rock out beside her, Shaw runs through a repertoire of punk-adjacent stares, shrugs and glances heavenwards. There are expressions you might dub “regretful oncologist” and a side eye that implies exasperation or complicity. The band’s kit boasts the initials DC in gothic script; smiley faces made from tape adorn their speaker cabinets, of which, fittingly, only one smiles and two are much more equivocal.
