Dry Cleaning's Secret Love is the year's most quietly devastating post-punk record

Some bands shout to be heard. Dry Cleaning just… talk. And on their third album, the talking has never cut deeper.

If you've not met them: the South London four-piece built their name on an unlikely formula — Florence Shaw half-speaking surreal, overheard fragments while the band coils tight, post-punk grooves underneath. It sounds like it shouldn't work. New Long Leg (2021) proved it does.

That debut, and the knottier Stumpwork that followed, made them critics' darlings — clever, deadpan, a little armoured.

Secret Love is the leap: the record where the formula stops being a trick and becomes a language.

Handing production to Cate Le Bon — herself one of the most quietly singular artists working — was the masterstroke. The band sound darker, groovier, more physical; Shaw, in turn, opens up, the deadpan cracking just enough to let real feeling through. It landed on 4AD in January to near-universal acclaim, and months on it still sounds like the most emotionally exact guitar record of the year.

Why it matters

Post-punk revival has been a crowded, often cynical lane for a decade. Secret Love is the rare entry that isn't reaching backward — it's a band who've found something only they can do, doing it better than ever. Put a number on it below, and tell us where it sits against New Long Leg.