On their latest album Secret Love, UK sprechgesang band Dry Cleaning hone in on their post-punk, strut rock sound helmed by the flawless delivery of frontperson Florence Shaw’s dry observations. KALW’s Music Director Tshego Letsoalo spoke to drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard about working with Cate Le Bon to make the album, and the ultimate cost of touring, which is impacting musicians at all levels.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Tshego Letsoalo: Very serious question. So, part of the Dry Cleaning lore is that when you had a conversation about deciding to be a serious band, that conversation happened at a Wimpy. I'm a South African, and we also have Wimpy, and it's like a very sacred place. So I have to ask what is your go-to Wimpy order? What’s the status of Wimpy in the UK?
Nick Buxton: So, it was a really big thing when we were kids, right? I remember it very vividly when I was a kid that it was, like, on a par with McDonald's.
Lewis Maynard: Well, it's McDonald's with a plate.
NB: Exactly, yes, it's like posh McDonald's. And now it's rarely seen, there aren't many of them left, and the reason we went to the one in Elton is because it was near where Lewis' parents lived, where we used to rehearse, and we were always going past it, and we needed to talk about some serious stuff. So, we went there just because we thought it would be nice. And it was, I have to say, I don't really remember it that well from when I was a kid.
LM: They did a square burger, right? Weren’t they famous for a square burger, and then also, like, the hot dog burger, which is like a hot dog cut up into a burger…I sound like I used to work there.
NB: Do you remember, Lewis, the guy that was serving us, he asked us what our band was called.
LM: He just laughed at us.
NB: That was the sign.
TL: And here you are! Congratulations also on the new album. I really, really love it. It feels like you've really pinned into the Dry Cleaning sound. I don't know if that's what it feels like for you as you were making it.
LM: You gain a confidence. You understand yourselves and each other more, because we spend so much time together as well over the past 8, 9 years now. You gain a lot of trust and that really helps the writing experience and that writing time you get together. I feel like since the beginning, Dry Cleaning's always been a band that encourages everyone to bring whatever they want to the table. And the more it goes on, the more that's encouraged.
I would say, use an example of “Hit My Head All Day,” which kind of started with Nick, who normally plays drums in the band. He had a keyboard loop that he was playing, and then Flo was playing harmonica, and it wasn't seen as being like, we're having a silly jam. It was like, we're just making music, and we’re just jamming. And I think that shows how it is a very freeing experience.
TL: I'm curious about that relationship with a producer. How much are you like, here's my baby demo and how much do you let them in to do the shaping, and what was that like specifically with Cate Le Bon?
LM: It was funny, because it wasn't so much, like, baby demo when we sent the tracks to Cate. We'd recorded them in really nice studios. We've been really spoiled, and fortunate, and there was even chat about some of these coming out as they are. And some producers who we'd spoken to had spoken about just making changes to what we had, or using parts of the recordings that we had.
But Cate was very confident in just re-recording everything. And approached it with emotion more than anyone else had. From the first Zoom call, she'd listened to the 20 or so tracks we'd sent her, and knew them inside out, and knew more about what we were trying to achieve than we realized at the time. We had this bank of songs that we didn't know if they would work together as a record, and she never doubted that for a second.
And she seemed to understand us as people; she seemed to understand this concept that we'd really loosely spoken about between us, about the record sounding like walking through different parts of a city, and she said that from the first call, and I think that sold it to us.
NB: Yeah. I think the thing you asked about how much you trust the producer is really important, because we had quite a serene experience with her, really, in the studio. I do think once you choose the person that is going to do the job, you have to trust them and go with their ideas, otherwise there's not really much point. But that doesn't mean that you can't push back on anything, you know, so you have to sort of figure out that relationship pretty early, and she's very masterful at kind of just convincing you to do stuff, but very reasonably.
LM: Knowing that, like you're saying, she won't give in, as in you have to kind of prove your point. Unlike some previous records, I recorded my parts, and nothing would really change when I was in the studio too much. And on this record, on “Let Me Grow and You'll See the Fruit,” she would not let me stop. As in, one day, I did something like 42 takes on it, and she's like, you haven't got it yet. It was the only song for me that I ever did any overdubs after, because I just couldn't capture it in that three weeks we were there.
TL: So how do you know when a song is done, or when an album is done? Because I do creative writing and sometimes you can go over a sentence a hundred times, and then be like okay, it's time to publish, and you let it go. But when you're making an album–and especially because it feels like there's so many little decisions in sound, or, like you're saying, it doesn't feel right–when do you have a point where you're like, okay, this is no longer my business anymore?
NB: I mean, that's tough. I think the same notion translates very well between the various disciplines. I think it is really hard to say when it's done. I think, in some sense, they aren't done. You know, we're about to start touring, and the songs we've been rehearsing the last month a lot, and, the songs have already changed.
So the songs continuing to be alive is what makes playing live interesting and touring sustainable in many ways.
LM: We talk about this a lot, about how when it's just the four of us who have heard it, it sounds a certain way, and then when you share it with maybe, like, a potential producer, it sounds different; and then when it becomes public, it becomes totally different, and you hear it forever differently. And it's always interesting, the day before it comes out to be like, “from tomorrow, I'm going to hear these songs differently.”
TL: A lot of artists have been talking about the cost of touring, you know, both literally the cost, but also mentally. I mean, is there anything that fans and listeners need to know to support? How do we be ethical music listeners and music supporters so that we can keep seeing you on tour?
LM: Buying records is a good start. Merch really. A lot of tours we do will survive on us just selling the merch, as in, the tour will be paying for our crew, and for the van, and for the bus, and for transport, and then the merch is what keeps us afloat as a band. It's so difficult at the moment.
Shirley Manson did a post about a week or two ago about how Garbage played, like, 40 dates across America, and only 10 of them turned a profit. And it's really scary, I think, especially because it kills bands that play between 200 capacity venues and 2,000 capacity venues. And if those can't afford to do it, and especially in cities where it becomes more expensive to even play in major cities. I know it's a lot of bands not playing in London now because it's so expensive just to stay here, or to play here. And that's really scary, it's really upsetting. Something's gotta change, and I don't know what it's gonna be.
NB: Yeah. I've been thinking about this for a while now, because it has been affecting us for a while. I really wish I had organized my thoughts better for some of the interviews we've been doing, because it's come up a lot. And I wish I had some really concise, direct message just to tell people what to do. Maybe I'll get around to that point. And I think Lewis has done a good job there. But, yeah, it's quite depressing for us how something just feels broken because there's so much money in the industry and it just seems like it's not really getting distributed very fairly. The reality for bands now is that you make income from lots of different little places so it's hard to try and tackle them all at once. People have been complaining about streaming and there doesn't seem to be any kind of fix for that on the horizon about a fairer distribution of royalties. But in the meantime, while that's been happening, people have been saying, oh, you've still got touring, right? Like, touring's still good, and now the squeeze is kind of happening on touring.
Yeah, the music industry really takes for granted the artists, they're just getting squeezed out of existence, and it's terrifying.
