Photo by Max Miechowski

Repetition is not Dry Cleaning’s innate nature, even if the post-punk band’s first single from their forthcoming third studio album, Secret Love, toys with monotony as its own sort of sonic kink. It’s suggestive at the very least of an evolution in the avant garde direction by the London four-piece by separating itself from the more blunt recurrences last heard on their solid sophomore effort, 2022’s Stumpwork, and instead meandering into a psychedelic state of thinking where the physical can be stretched by the subconscious. Guitar angles bend and distort like Dalí paintings and rhythmic elasticity drips behind a condensation of breaths pumping oxygen into the cortext, sculpted with impressionistic detail by fellow artiste and producer Cate Le Bonn. “I simply must have experiences, ” Florence Shaw asserts, in clear spoke word. “Manipulate me / Wiggle my arms.” It’s not a head cracked open. It’s an expanded mind.

Directed by: Cuan Roche

Dry Cleaning’s Secret Love will be released January 9th on 4AD.