Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork
Dry Cleaning seeped quickly onto the scene, debuting with two
of the best EPs from 2019 and one of the best albums of 2021. The fact that
they were so quick to rush out a second album was concerning. Was it a rush
job, or a lighter album helmed on tour stops? Neither, in fact the seeds of Stumpwork
were written before New Long Leg was even finished, which cements that
not only are the band prodigious writers, but that when the band is given more
time to hone their songs, as they do here, the results are that much stronger.
While the previous albums played within a very specific,
talk-sing, post-punk wheelhouse, Dry Cleaning’s newest blows any projected constraints
away. Florence Shaw is still iconoclastically unique in her vocal style and presence,
but it never feels like a gimmick, instead it sounds like she is beholden to
the tracks, wrestling with the lyrics and the anxiety of the complex guitar and
instrumental work, with the finished product as emotive as someone belting a high
note.
Stumpwork is bright and more exploratory than what
came before, the result of a band pushing the boundaries of its sound farther
than just about any of their peers without losing track of their trademark
lockstep groove. That groove is what drives each song, as it did on the band’s
previous work, with much of Shaw’s stream of conscious lyrics originating in
real time during recording. Even if the basis for how the band works together
is the same though, their desire to push farther than they have before is what
remains most notable. Dry Cleaning were never depressing or dark per se, but Stumpwork
revels in optimism; an understanding that the group has found an audience and that
despite the deaths of some of the band’s family members between albums, their work
was important enough to perceiver. There is grief, but Dry Cleaning has
developed a maturity to the grief, one of well-made songs and joie de vivre.
~9.5
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