Dry Cleaning
I’m talking about the band, not clothes.
My secret cultural resource is “The Week,” that’s where I pick up left field tips about books, TV shows, podcasts and music. Every week “The Week” features three albums, which they rate on a four star system, and almost never, I mean I can’t remember the last time they gave an album a four star review. Two or three star reviews are a dime a dozen, they don’t deserve my attention, but four stars? Then I pay attention.
But like I said, this is very rare. But “The Week” gave Dry Cleaning’s new album “Secret Love” a four star review.
Now you may have been aware of the mania surrounding the Canadian duo, Angine de Poitrine. I first heard about them weeks ago from George Drakoulias, and I pay attention to everything George says. And I checked out the band, and I got it immediately, but I asked myself how much was shock value, hit and run, and to what degree did I want to listen to an album of this stuff over and over again?
What I’m saying here is people are looking so hard for the next good thing that they trumpet it without questioning whether it has anything beyond first impression, shock value. Kinda like Alice Cooper. The ethos, the stage act were there, but it wasn’t until they worked with Bob Ezrin and created “I’m Eighteen” that they made music you wanted to hear more than once, over and over again.
Do you want to hear Dry Cleaning over and over again?
Some compare Dry Cleaning to Wire. I bought “Pink Flag” when it came out, played it, understood it, but didn’t play it much more thereafter. I got it intellectually, it did hit me emotionally, but I didn’t want to go to that place on a regular basis. Whereas Dry Cleaning’s “Hit My Head All Day”…
Now you don’t have to do much research to learn that the vocals are more spoken than sung, and that works occasionally in a song, but on a regular basis I find it unsatisfying.
And I’ll admit the thundering drum intro of “Hit My Head All Day” didn’t grab me, draw me right in, nor the spoken vocal, but when the guitar came along forty seconds in, I got it IMMEDIATELY! I was instantly hooked. And ultimately there was a guitar hook, which stuck in my brain long after the song was over.
Who is making this music? Well, there are four members of the group, and although I believe the guitarist to be the star so far, all the focus is upon the frontwoman, Florence Shaw. Who Wikipedia says is 36 or 37.
Now wait just a minute, this is not the paradigm we see executed today Today’s acts are younger and younger, they learn how to use the digital tools nearly from birth, they’re expert marketers…as for the music, well purveyors believe young people are the active audience, so these young acts are signed and promoted and…
They sound nothing like Dry Cleaning.
And it’s not like Florence Shaw has been in the garage with the guys since her teenage years, she only joined the group in 2018. When most people are thinking about settling down as opposed to going on an artistic adventure.
Then again, she used to teach illustration at universities, she only gave up this gig recently, as a result of the band’s increased notoriety and success.
Now it’s not like Dry Cleaning is completely unknown. They’ve got two EPs and three albums, and they’ve gotten some press. But Pitchfork is a tsunami of information almost as incomprehensible as the release schedule itself, never mind having peaked before it was acquired by Condé Nast.
But “Secret Love” was also reviewed in the “Wall Street Journal.” And I get the paper and look at the reviews but my eyes always start to slide into the back of my head when I read them. So often acts I know little if anything about that are overanalyzed at length. Most of which don’t demand much attention.
And that’s what Dry Cleaning demands, attention.
You can listen to “Hit My Head All Day” on earbuds, even headphones, but you won’t get it, you may not get it at all. No, you need the bass to infect your body, you need to feel it in your bones, that guitar’s got to sting, and you can only get those experiences from a real audio system with enough raw power not to distort.
Listening to “Hit My Head All Day” reminds me of the pre-internet days, the seventies, when I’d crank up an album on the stereo, the most important element of my living room, MY HOUSE, and the sound would envelop me as I walked around, sometimes I’d just sit on the couch in front of the speakers and let the sound wash over me, envelop me. It was the opposite of today’s concert experience, being there with your buds, shooting selfies. No, it was an isolationist experience. Actually better alone. Someone else in the room would just make you self-conscious. No, it was just you and the music, a religious experience.
Will you like “Hit My Head All Day”?
Most people will not, most people will want to turn it off immediately. Then there are those who remember this sound, this feeling, of the bleeding edge, not needing to tell everybody about it because you’re too busy listening, experiencing it.
As for the rest of “Secret Love”…I am not yet as enamored of it as I am of “Hit My Head All Day.”
This is not Angine de Poitrine. This is not visual, it’s something that goes into your ears, that you feel.
All I know is I can’t turn “Hit My Head All Day” off, because I like the feeling, the mood it puts me in.
