With their third studio album, Secret Love, South London’s Dry Cleaning have officially moved beyond the initial hype of the post-punk revival, evolving into a band willing to risk their established formula.
Released via 4AD and produced by the avant-pop polymath Cate Le Bon, the record is a fascinating evolution that suggests the band is more interested in longevity than repeating the lightning-in-a-bottle success of New Long Leg (2021) and Stumpwork (2022).
The core ingredients remain: Florence Shaw’s unmatched delivery still turns the mundane into the surreal. However, the biggest shock comes on track three, “My Soul / Half Pint”, where Shaw departs from her distinctive deadpan, spoken-word delivery to actually sing. Her melodic vocals are airy and haunting, floating over a landscape of shimmering, chorus-drenched guitars. This vocal expansion bookends the album, as Shaw returns to a melodic register on the final track, “Joy”, grounding the record’s experimental tendencies with a surprising sense of vulnerability. It is a bold departure that proves the band is no longer content staying within the lines they once drew for themselves.
Lyrically, Shaw still excels at using everyday, found details, but this time the focus feels more inward and personal, matching an album-wide shift toward a more down-tempo, reflective art-rock sound. The jagged post-punk urgency of earlier records is softened here, replaced by looser grooves and a calmer, more spacious feel that gives her words room to linger. On “Cruise Ship Designer”, she turns plain, workaday language into something quietly revealing with the line, “Cruises are big business / I don’t personally like them,” finding meaning in blunt, offhand observation. Elsewhere, on “I Need You”, the slower pace allows object-based imagery to carry real emotional weight, as she frames longing through the homely metaphor, “I’m waiting inside a talcum powder box / For you to lift the lid and discover me.”
Despite the shift toward a more downtempo art-rock sound, the track “Rocks” stands out as a brilliant outlier. Here, the band taps back into a raw, visceral energy; the guitaring is sharp, aggressive, and almost punk-like in its execution. It provides a necessary jolt of adrenaline amidst the album’s more atmospheric explorations.
This overall move toward a cerebral, spacious sound raises an interesting question about the band’s live trajectory. Dry Cleaning are currently preparing for their biggest headline show at London’s prestigious Brixton Academy. While their earlier, punchier material is a proven winner in club environments, seeing how these slow-burn tracks translate to a venue of that scale will be the ultimate test. Secret Love represents a definitive consolidation of the band’s identity, marking a sophisticated transition toward a more intricate and atmospheric sonic landscape.
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