Dry Cleaning – Unsmart Lady
- NICK DUTFIELD
- Apr 16, 2021
- 3 min read
Michael Blastland´s book The Hidden Half : The Unseen Forces That Influence Everything doesn´t say much about Simon Cowell´s influence on Sleaford Mods, but it does have a fun point to make about recent scientific research´s tendency towards positivity. Blastland identifies the way researcher´s bosses frown on negative or neutral results, leading to an over-representation of success in scientific literature. Successes which are often disproved down the line, but which live long enough to keep funding streams flowing. This blog is cheerfully, (so cheerfully) free of funding streams´ toxic flow, so we are going to buck this trend; a thesis will be declared, and then declared useless, all in the space of two paragraphs.
Pop Idol has been around for over 15 years, so let´s picture a generation whose pop horizons have permanently been obscured by talent show edifices. Many would react by taking melisma and preening to the point of destruction, but what about the rebels? Might they end up thinking that even singing was naff, and rejecting it in favour of Prozac prosaic delivery, celebrating the mundane and flirting hazardously close to the sound of boredom. Look at the Sleaford Mods for example. This is where the theory springs its first leak. At least one of them is older than me, meaning that Pop Idol´s 15 year duration is insignificant, plus people like us learnt to turn over the telly before talent glitz clichés could seep in. I really should pay attention to people´s wrinkles. I might as well be claiming Homer´s interest in seafaring is all down to Poldark. And not even specify the old one.
Dry Cleaning were other group in mind to represent the ´Pop Idol discourages singing´ theorem. This time it´s not really age that is the key, although I now realise they are not teenagers, it´s more a question of cultural horizons. Both singer Florence Shaw, and guitarist Tom Dowse have been lecturers at Art College, which limits the odds that Pop Idol was a dominating force in their aesthetic development. In fact, an interview with Rolling Stone tells us that Shaw´s style, involving obliquely quotidian lyrics delivered with minimum melody or drama, first grew from a reluctance to sing, combined with wider inspiration. She recalls the period when the band convinced her to join as frontperson,
“Nick (Buxton – Drummer) sent me a text: ‘You don’t have to sing. You can just talk,’” Shaw recalls. The drummer gave her a playlist with Grace Jones´ Private Life a song by celebrity photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s comedic character Will Powers, and other eccentric pop cuts, and she began to warm to the notion.
As Jones and Powers both got production done by Sly & Robbie, maybe they´re to blame for all this talking, not Simon Cowell. In other words, the ´talent show breeds shouters theory´ has been ruled out in thick marker.
Unsmart Lady stands tall as a case of talking appeal. When your chorus is fat podgy, non make-up, unsmart lady, melody would be incongruous. Shaw´s lyrics sit comfortably, permeating the atmosphere at their own sedate pace, whilst the band make a background maelstrom of sliced guitar thrang. Dowse spent his past guitar time doing proper hardcore, and the elements of this are clear, if sheer speed, volume and ornamentation can be filtered down into a deft control of speed, volume and ornamentation. In the Watchmen TV series, there is a part where the message Save Me appears the scree surface of Europa, one of Jupiter´s moon, and it´s spelled out with dead bodies. Dry Cleaning´s sound is a lot like that, except the message is A tanned foot squeezed hopefully into a short boot, and it´s spelled out in dead Twix wrappers. Sonic scree plus artless commentary, and it works so well.
THIS WEEK
Dry Cleaning – Unsmart Lady
61, 012 views since 30th March Weekly Average Views – 25, 123
LAST WEEK
Ohtis - Schatze (feat. Stef Chura)
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EXTRAS
Dry Cleaning – Scratchcard Lanyard
Will Powers – Adventures In Success
Grace Jones – Private Life
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