Dry cleaning is back.

Design by Addy Russel

By Avery Piazza

After reflecting upon what’s been missing in life since 2023, I’ve realized it’s the lack of post-punk slam poetry over percussive bass and distorted guitar. This hole has been filled by the release of Dry Cleaning’s new single “Hit My Head All Day,” a preface to their new album Secret Love, which is set to release in January. After a nearly three year musical hiatus, the British band resurfaced with their familiar yet nuanced sound, feeling more grounded as opposed to their typical hoppy guitar. Vocalist, Florence Shaw, comes through at the start of the track with a confidently intimate whisper over a deep staccato baseline and a simple drilling snare beat. Shaw’s abstract lyricism, reminiscent of Kim Gordon, sets a nihilistic tone at the top of the track — “Life, a series of memorials and signals/ Telling us this or that” — before a brief interlude about the desired vegetables of a young horse, then settling into the repetitive chant of “I simply must have experiences/ Manipulate me, wiggle my arms.” Dry Cleaning is back. As the new track builds, Shaw’s low-registered lyrics float above an instrumental swell, flared with drawn out synths and an added distortion to the already droning guitar riff. It’s the type of song that puts you in your own world, even in the midst of a crowded place, before you catch yourself staring with more intensity than you intended or absentmindedly syncing your walk to the beat. It feels like biding your time in fall until a much anticipated January—the purgatory of Dry Cleaning.