Doing it all and doing it their way: Dry Cleaning return with ‘Hit My Head All Day’
Dry Cleaning are back and they’re back in a big way. Sharing their first new music since 2023, it’s like the band have taken every possible thing that inspires them and thrown it in a blender – the result is ‘Hit My Head All Day’.
Let’s unpack some of them. In the background, bassist Lewis Maynard holds the track down with a playful disco-like sound, reminiscent of Talking Heads’ own genre disregard. On guitar, Tom Dowse is going all in. As the riff repeats over and over and over, it’s somewhere between gritty grunge and sleek ‘70s rock, somewhere between the CBGB scene and Keith Richards’ desire to write guitar lines that will stay stuck in your head.
Dare I say there’s even something Prince-like? Each time the synths flare, alongside the bassline, it feels reminiscent of the ‘Purple One’ and all his finest, underrated cuts, or his most seductive moments.
Front and centre, though, bringing it all back home, is the unmistakable vocals of Florence Shaw. As the voice that captured the attention of the music world, her sound is so singularly hers that it feels like the rest of the band could literally do whatever they want and stray into whatever genres they might fancy, and it will always still feel like theirs, or like they own it, as long as Shaw is sing-speaking over the top.
In case all of that didn’t sell you on hitting play on the track, Cate Le Bon produced it, absolutely nailing the balance between giving the song polish without losing any of the texture and keeping a good amount of scratch to the comeback of the alternative heroes.
With so much going on and so many references or nods to pick up on, Dry Cleaning might just have nailed mass appeal, or at least, their broadest appeal yet. Clearly shaking off the shackles of the tired post-punk-adjacent world where gloom, and only gloom, was the way forward, it’s the lightness and movability of this song that seems to open its arms and welcome more people into the cult.
‘Hit My Head All Day’ stands as the opening, not just to this return but to the album that’s to follow. Announcing that Secret Love will be released in January 2026, there is still a fair amount of waiting to be done. But as this track sits as song one, surely with a gateway this golden, the rest to follow will only get stronger.
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