[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. (more…)
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