‘Scratchcard Lanyard’: Dry Cleaning’s absurdist take on motherhood pressures
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(Credit: Press)
Despite their brilliance, Dry Cleaning never seemed like the sort of band who would manage to break out of obscurity. The London foursome’s minimalist approach to post-punk with repetitive rhythms, sparse guitar lines and surreal spoken word is arresting, but there was little indication that it would prove to be a smash outside of a niche circle.
Against the odds, the band are now mainstays of the UK post-punk revival, court relatively high placements on festival bills and even have a Grammy Award win to their name, albeit for the pubic artwork displayed on Stumpwork as opposed to the music. Their seemingly lackadaisical approach is something that works well when all members come together and hits with far more force than one might expect it to, capturing a sense of ennui that many other bands try hard but fail to replicate.
If there’s one thing that sets Dry Cleaning apart from their contemporaries, it’s their comparative maturity. While many of the current crop of acts that often get discussed in the same breath are still more fresh-faced and full of a youthful energy, their approaches conversely come across as more naive or force a sense of malaise. With members who have a few more years of life experience behind them and have previously been in bands that were chewed up and spat out by the industry, Dry Cleaning’s apathy appears more genuine.
Although vocalist Florence Shaw’s lyrics often appear in note form and can require some thought to decipher, her stream-of-consciousness style can make the mundane feel uncomfortably real, as though she’s reading a list of the listener’s anxieties and turning them into a waking nightmare through abstract juxtapositions.
This is no more impactful than on ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’, the band’s first single from breakthrough debut album New Long Leg. It’s full of Shaw’s trademark non-sequiturs and bizarre ways of referencing the everyday, but beneath the cloak of absurdism lies what the singer refers to as a “revenge fantasy”, as she explained in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“It’s feeling quite pissed off and fatigued with the roles you’re asked to fulfil as a woman past the age of 30,” she explains. With this insight, lines that might initially feel out of place such as “do everything and feel nothing” take on a wealth of meaning and importance to the struggle of women who are approaching the age of motherhood. This line, in particular, which is seemingly borrowed from a slogan used by menstrual product manufacturer Tampax, seems to suggest the idea that women and mothers are expected by society to have control of everything. Yet, the reward is not as great as the work put in.
Shaw continues by saying, “It was a noticeable thing, that suddenly I have these pressures that my brother and my male friends don’t have.” This feeling of frustration and helplessness becomes more apparent throughout the song, with lines like “a woman in aviators firing a bazooka” appearing to represent her urge to appear strong and resilient towards this sexist ideal. Still, in the following pre-chorus section, she continues to lament the amount of things she has to juggle to please her child, with her expressing her grievance for the child’s ever-changing demands: “Why don’t you want oven chips now?”
Her lyrics will often be described as surreal, but it doesn’t take long to peel back the curtain to reveal realistic disgruntlement with daily life. It’s something that the younger crowd and younger peers might feel as though they can relate to but won’t fully understand until they’ve been there themselves and found their own ways of expressing it. As for Shaw’s method of articulating these feelings is unique, and her lyricism stands tall as some of the most compelling being produced currently.
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