Seasons Greetings from Dry Cleaning by Song List Rat

Florence Shaw wears sensible shoes. Luckily the lead singer of UK band Dry Cleaning doesn’t sing sensible lyrics. On this hot Perth Friday night Florence’s skull metaphorically opens up and spews out her lyrics while she drinks Dingo lager from a can. 

Dry Cleaning bolt right out of the gate with two songs from new LP Stumpwork and two from debut LP New Long Leg. The band is a thumper. 

Kwenchy Cups…

Things are shit, but they’re gonna be okay

And I’m gonna see the otters

There aren’t any otters

On Gary Ashby lead guitarist Tom Dowse plays Smithsesque guitar while wielding his axe like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Lewis Maynard on bass and Nick Buxton on drums are less vibrant on the dance floor but concentrate on building an impeccable wall of rhythm. New Dan adds another layer on keys. Flo’s body hardly moves but her face is contorting with eyes rolling back in her head as she emotes every lyric about a lost tortoise. 

On Scratch Card Lanyard she gives her floating left rib a few scratches…

I’ll be Ok, I just need to be weird and hide for a bit

And eat an old sandwich from my bag

I’ve come here to make a ceramic shoe

And I’ve come to smash what you made

I’ve come to learn how to mingle

I’ve come to learn how to dance 

The Rosie is full and heaving. The crowd are mingling in tight. Flo takes a breather thanking Australians for being some of the first to listen to and buy their music long before they were a touring band.

In her sensible shoes and white dress Flo is Lewis Carol’s Alice. She has been living in a weird parallel world down a rabbit hole. Now she has come up into the real world that has warped beyond belief when broken down piece by piece. At first the music seems chaotic and directionless and it’s the beautiful spoken English that hold the performance together. But as the night wears on the band’s amazing cohesive rock, punk, jazz and funk fusion is revealed while Flo’s aphorisms, musings and non sequiturs become a lysergic brain about to explode. 

The music holds her together, just! When Flo brings out a small melodica she has reverse metamorphosed into The Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. Over-enunciating many words to give us all sage advice about the future of modern life. There is a final band storming song The Magic Of Meghan, the song that started it all in 2019. They come back for one final attack in the encore and then they are gone. 

For 90 minutes we were all in Wonderland.