Review: Dry Cleaning - Secret Love

The beginning of 2026 was strange. Strange in a diffuse, almost atmospheric sense. Continuous, aggressive, and constant global bullying is amplified by digital noise, extreme rhetoric, and a general feeling of exhaustion. Everything seems to happen at once, to excess. It is in this context that I find myself alone in Rome. And those who travel alone know music ceases to be just background noise and becomes company, a lens, a commentary.

I enter the Vatican Museums with this awareness. This space where the sacred and the obscene coexist without apparent tension. Where spirituality materializes in gold, monumental frescoes, endless marble, and endless lines. Everything is impressive, but also excessive. Choosing an album for this trip was not a logistical detail; it was a narrative decision. I needed something that didn't romanticize the moment, that didn't amplify the grandeur, that kept me grounded. I chose Secret Love, Dry Cleaning's new album. And it was an immediate choice.

Dry Cleaning is a band that has always worked better in the field of observation than catharsis. Formed in south London, it functions as a collective where identity does not depend on classic protagonists. Florence Shaw is at the center, yes, but not as a traditional vocalist. Her spoken, restrained, almost documentary voice functions as a narrative axis. Around her, Tom Dowse, Lewis Maynard, and Nick Buxton build a flexible musical space, where each instrument reacts, comments, and sustains. From the beginning, the band has shown rare confidence in the collective process; their songs don't sound like glued-together parts, but like internal conversations. Secret Love is perhaps the album where this is most evident. Recorded in various spaces and shaped by different atmospheres, it is also the album where Dry Cleaning seems most at ease with their own language.

As I walk through the corridors of the Vatican, surrounded by symbols of spiritual power accumulated over centuries, Secret Love acts as a counterpoint. Full of dark humor, irony, and subtle satire, the record never imposes itself, but it is also never absent. There is something deeply stabilizing about this combination of calm sarcasm and emotional lucidity.

Musically, the album maintains the restraint that defines the band, but introduces more movement, more groove, and more warmth. The guitars are no longer just angular, but also melodic; the bass takes on a more narrative role; the drums maintain the structure without becoming rigid. There is a clear openness compared to previous works, closely associated with the collaboration with Cate Le Bon, whose production brings risk, confidence, and an organic strangeness that never sounds forced. Florence Shaw continues to write as if she were collecting fragments of the world. The lyrics are composed of found language, interrupted thoughts, and mundane observations that turn into insightful social commentary. Strength lies as much in what is said as in how it is said. The delivery is calm, almost indifferent, and that is precisely where the impact lies.

“My Soul / Half Pint” immediately stood out on this journey. The song addresses the division of domestic labor, gender expectations, and structural inequality with a humor so dry that it almost passes for casual conversation. When observing a space built almost exclusively to glorify male figures — popes, saints, patriarchs — the phrase “maybe it's time for men to clean for 500 years” ceases to be merely ironic. It becomes a belated historical commentary. “Evil Evil Idiot” reveals the more uncomfortable side of the album, an almost pathological obsession with the body, food, purity, and self-control. All said in a literal, almost absurd way, creating a grotesque effect that provokes laughter and discomfort at the same time. Listening to this track in a space where the body has always been a symbol, a sin, and an instrument of power gives it an additional layer of meaning.

There is a certain arrogance here, but without gratuitous nostalgia. Dry Cleaning remain strange, but they no longer hide behind their strangeness. They sound confident, aware of their place. Throughout Secret Love, there is a constant sense of contrast: between humor and discomfort, between social criticism and intimacy, between irony and care. This last element is perhaps the most surprising. Despite the sarcasm, the album is imbued with a clear desire for deliberate kindness. Not naive but chosen.  This becomes evident in “Joy,” the track closing the album. In a world that seems committed to ridiculing any idea of sweetness, ending an album with a simple appeal not to give up on being kind is almost a political gesture. There is no easy utopia here, but there is a clear refusal to give in completely to cynicism. Listening to Secret Love while walking through the Vatican was, in essence, an exercise in translation. Dry Cleaning's lyrics don't address religion, sacred art, or institutional power directly. Instead, they explore strange systems, normalized absurdities, and the ways people learn to exist within oppressive structures without completely losing their sense of identity. These themes dialogue in a surprisingly direct way with that space.

In the end, the idea is simple and honest: I really liked this record. The encounter felt meaningful. Secret Love is ironic, sarcastic, thoughtful, and, against all expectations, warm. It doesn't reinvent Dry Cleaning, but it deepens them. It's perfect for facing the madness that 2026 seems to promise — music that doesn't shout, doesn't moralize, doesn't offer easy consolation, but accompanies. And right now, that's more than enough.

Words: Joana Maia de Sousa

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Album Highlights
My Soul/Half Pint
Evil Evil Idiot
Rocks