I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: May 6, 2026] Dry Cleaning [rescheduled from February 1, 2026]

Back in February, Dry Cleaning had to reschedule their American tour until May.  Back in 2022, a family emergency prevented me from going to this show.  I was interested in Dry Cleaning who at the time were a kind of trendy British band.  They are of the spoken deadpan vocal/wild guitar noise variety.   I thought they’d be fun to see live once.

So I was glad I did get to see them live.  But what I figured by the end of the night was that you will enjoy them a lot more if you know their songs well.  This is more or less true for a lot of bands; however, there are many bands that I’ve seen where I didn’t know them at all, but I was blown away. With Dry Cleaning, it’s hard to hear the spoken, deadpan words.  So if you focus on the words, you miss out on all the interesting music being made. And if you focus on the music, the words just become another sound.

So I definitely didn’t get the most out of the show.

They are such an odd band to experience because the Tom Dowse plays really noisy, odd and, at times, abrasive guitar sounds.  Lewis Maynard plays some really interesting bass lines melodies and sometimes thumps along with the Nick Buxton on drums.  Regardless of what the band is doing, Florence Shaw speaks at the same volume and speed.

They opened with Sliced by a Fingernail a new single with really random loud guitar noises.  Dowse is interesting to watch as he moves around a bit generating these sounds.  But the bassline is catchy and Florence even doo-doo-doos sometimes.  Which isn’t that unusual since she does occasionally “sing” lines like that.  But mostly it’s a quiet spoken word vocal which is often drowned out by the music.

Dowse was the chatty member of the band.  He was fun to watch as well, since he also played some keys from time to time.  They also had Josh Eggerton in the back, a touring musician who plays keys and guitars.  I really enjoyed that you could hear his acoustic guitar while Dowse was playing lead.

Overall, the show was a pretty low key affair.  There were hanging lights, but nothing too dramatic.  In fact, there wasn’t a lot of dynamic movement on stage so when Florence shook a maraca during Secret Love it was a pretty big deal.  And it was a bit of a surprise when Buxton played sax in the middle of a song.

The cool thing about the band is once you get past Florence’s vocals, the music is really quite different throughout the songs.  There’s even some catchy, poppy melodies like on Joy.  Or I Need You which features the bass volume easing up on each note–a distinct sound for them.  Florence spoke from time to time, but in particular she pointed out that at the end of this song when she says that everyone everywhere cheers loudly when she says Fuck the World, Fuck the World at the end of this song.

I also got a kick out of Florence making a phone ringing sound and then having a conversation during Conversation.  I know this is the way the song goes, but it was fun to witness it.  After this song, the band left for a short break and then came back for one encore song.   The song was Hit My Head All Day which I had known was a single but which I thought was a much older song (it’s on the new album).  For this song Eggerton also banged on a drum to really get that hitting sound loud.

I need to listen to them a lot more to really find out everything that’s going on with the band.  I can’t imagine seeing them again, but I feel like if I really get into their music, a live experience would be amazing to see.

• Sliced by a Fingernail §
• Blood ♥
• Gary Ashby ♣
• The Cute Things ♥
• Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy) ♥
• Strong Feelings ∑
• Anna Calls From the Arctic ♣
• Her Hippo ∑
• My Soul/Half Pint ♥
• Cruise Ship Designer ♥
• Scratchcard Lanyard ∑
• Evil Evil Idiot ♥
• I Need You ♥
• Don’t Press Me ♣
• Joy ♥
• Rocks ♥
• Magic of Meghan ©
• Let Me Grow and You’ll See the Fruit ♥
• Conversation  ©
  Encore
• Hit My Head All Day ♥