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Apr 5, 2021Dry Cleaning have a sound that is as singular as it is dazzling.
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Apr 5, 2021Dry Cleaning have far more talent than they do irreverence. How satisfying, then, that where Miller was one and done, they’ve only just gotten started.
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Apr 1, 2021New Long Leg may not always be positive, but it's more interesting than that, more needling and necessary. It's everything at once, a record that absorbs and spits back the unending noise of the world and asks that you take a second look, every common thing somehow made brand new.
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Apr 1, 2021Displacing the emotional in favour of engagingly tenuous perspectives, this precariously magnetic album, much like the contents of Dourofs, will absolutely floor you.
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Apr 2, 2021It amounts to something tougher and more original than merely the sum of classically cool influences—a sound that activates Shaw’s disparate imagery, making the setting seem more dangerous.
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Apr 6, 2021Dry Cleaning seem a working-class band, but they are not a political band in that same sense. This concept is mimicked across many post-punk bands past and present, but instead of trying to stay firmly between those politically-charged guardrails they have stepped outside of them and created their own scenic route.
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Apr 1, 2021Some grin in the face of the absurd and rotten, and others reflect all the hot air back outward. Dry Cleaning make an art of doing both.
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Apr 9, 2021Dry Cleaning gave us a taste in 2019; New Long Leg is a banquet upon which to feast.
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Apr 6, 2021Ultimately, there’s a charming purity that runs through ‘New Long Leg’, and a sense that Dry Cleaning wasn’t the product of a masterplan. Instead it’s the by-product of the lives they were already leading which gives an uncompromising human quality to this debut.
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The WireApr 5, 2021The combination of simple but taut musicality and literate lyricism is a winning one. [Apr 2021, p.54]
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Apr 2, 2021Shaw is the magic ingredient. Her lyrics – snippets of found text, but mostly her own writing – leap out, and have more impact from being delivered conversationally, freed from the rhythms and meter of the music. ... This is a debut to be excited about.
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Apr 2, 2021They know exactly what they're doing, and the risks they take result in a debut album that brings a fresh energy to post-punk that's equally challenging and rewarding.
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Apr 1, 2021New Long Leg delivers on every level, from Shaw’s lyrical attention to detail to the impeccable musicianship that surrounds her. Fulfilling all the promise shown by those early releases not to mention 4AD’s faith in signing them up, Dry Cleaning are the real deal. Potential realized in abundance.
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Apr 1, 2021In the past decade or so, countless bands have been brought up from the same well of tightly-wound, expressionistic rock (Protomartyr, Preoccupations, Shame, IDLES, Shame, Fontaines DC), but none hold the same uniquely fascinating appeal that Dry Cleaning have. Play New Long Leg loud, and play it often.
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Apr 1, 2021Any vocalist might thrill to engage with such sleek backing tracks, yet Shaw’s cool delivery and off-kilter lyricism occupies unusual spaces in the band’s arrangements, pushing the whole project into edgily discombobulating territory.
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MojoMar 31, 2021Comic, sinister, suddenly moving, it feels like real-time psychological excavation, digging for truth. [May 2021, p.84]
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UncutMar 31, 2021Pleasingly grubby debut LP. [May 2021, p.25]
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Mar 31, 2021The band’s impressive interplay and energy make these songs wonderfully replayable, to the point where the lyrics feel melodic and singalong worthy.
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Mar 31, 2021‘New Long Leg’ feels a world apart from the staleness of so many groups tagged with the term ‘post punk’. Indeed, as a complete aesthetic statement, the debut album from Dry Cleaning hardly merits contemporaries at all – suffocating, surreal, and exploratory, it takes chances other groups could scarcely envisage.
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Mar 31, 2021While they’re an intricate, tight band in their own right, their greatest weapon on ‘New Long Leg’ is allowing Shaw’s vocals the space to make their impact, swelling and retreating at the perfect times.
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Mar 31, 2021It’s difficult to see where Dry Cleaning goes after the defiant line in the sand drawn here. But for those willing to follow them, and especially frontwoman Shaw, it’s likely they will blaze an idiosyncratic path in the music sphere, similar to what they have accomplished on this rather remarkable, often powerful, and always challenging, debut.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 34 out of 39
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Mixed: 3 out of 39
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Negative: 2 out of 39
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Apr 3, 2021
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Jul 12, 2022
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Dec 15, 2021