Label: 4AD
Released: 9th January 2026
On their third album, ‘Secret Love’, Dry Cleaning are a band fully formed. There’s no sense of provocation for its own sake here, no anxiety about sprechgesang novelty. Instead, it unfolds with a quiet confidence, as though the group have developed a proper appreciation of how the music actually feels when it’s given room to breathe.
Following ‘Stumpwork’, ‘Secret Love’ is Dry Cleaning sounding less brittle, less pinned to a single set of post-punk reference points, and more open to texture, atmosphere and variation. The band’s identity remains unmistakable, but it’s no longer confined to one lane.
The choice of Cate Le Bon as producer proves quietly decisive. Her influence commands the art of creating space. Instruments feel separated rather than stacked, allowing details to register that might have been flattened otherwise. The result is a record that feels more three-dimensional than its predecessors, even when the songs themselves remain deceptively simple.
That sense of openness is clear from the start. Opener ‘Hit My Head All Day’ is built around a slow-burning momentum that signals a broader palette. A confident start, it trusts atmosphere and repetition to do the work rather than leaning on immediacy. From there, ‘Secret Love’ moves with fluidity. ‘Cruise Ship Designer’ leans into angular propulsion, while ‘My Soul / Half Pint’ thickens the air, allowing the band’s heavier instincts to surface.
Florence Shaw’s vocal delivery remains central, but it has been subtly recalibrated. Still spoken rather than sung and dryly observational, her voice now feels more integrated into the music around it. There’s a sense that the delivery is less about detachment and more about precision, choosing exactly when to lean in and when to pull back, making songs feel inhabited rather than narrated.
As the album progresses, its emotional range becomes clearer. ‘Evil Evil Idiot’ pushes the mood darker, ‘Blood’ and ‘Rocks’ stay taut and restless, and ‘I Need You’ and ‘Let Me Grow and You’ll See the Fruit’ ease off the pressure. The record navigates between these spaces without sounding uncertain.
What’s striking about ‘Secret Love’ is how little it feels the need to explain itself. There’s no grand conceptual framework being signposted, nor is there an attempt to package the album as a statement about the moment. And yet it carries a quiet sense of engagement with the world around it, touching on ideas of influence, control and uncertainty without ever tipping into didacticism. The record trusts its audience to sit with ambiguity, and rightly so.
Dry Cleaning’s refusal of the expected role has always been part of their appeal. On ‘Secret Love’, that resistance shows up, but differently than before – the changes are quieter, but equally deliberate. It’s a record from a band allowing their sound to widen without ever losing sight of who they are.
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