I am staring at the band Dry Cleaning, appropriately enough, across a mountain of food. The south London four-piece are known for their distinctive, enveloping post-punk overlaid with hypnotic spoken word lyrics that are by turns profound, poetic, and replete with references to snacks: hotdogs, old sandwiches, Alpen, pancakes, £17 mushrooms, cheap chocolate mousse. One of their most important discussions, about whether to continue with the band in earnest rather than as a fun pastime, happened in a Wimpy. “The big Wimpy meeting,” remembers drummer Nick Buxton. “I went past it the other day. They should have a blue plaque now.”
It’s a good thing they did decide to persist with the band. Their debut album, New Long Leg, recorded with PJ Harvey producer John Parish, was released to rave reviews in April 2021 and made many end-of-year lists; it was named Rough Trade’s album of the year and the New York Times described vocalist Florence Shaw as “weaving the random linguistic detritus of modern life into loose, surreal narratives”. They have many famous fans, including Marina Abramović, Suede’s Brett Anderson and Grace Jones, who chose them for her Meltdown festival earlier this summer. “It’s almost like everyone feels that Dry Cleaning is that band they found in lockdown,” says guitarist Tom Dowse. Their fans refer to themselves as “bouncy balls”, a nod to their mesmerising single Scratchcard Lanyard: “It’s a Tokyo bouncy ball / It’s an Oslo bouncy ball / It’s a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball”.
