Florence Shaw (Dry Cleaning) with Sue Tompkins

About this episode

Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning and Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings discuss their unique vocal styles and musical journeys.

On this week’s Talkhouse Podcast, we’ve got two women whose singing styles are similar in that they’re both absolutely singular, unmistakable, and wonderfully out of step—just don’t call it spoken-word. It’s Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning and Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings. As you’ll hear in this chat, Dry Cleaning sort of fell together in London around 2017, when the three instrumentalists approached their friend Florence Shaw to add some vocals to the music they had been writing. It turned out that Shaw’s approach—speaking dense, clearly crafted but never obvious words—slotted in perfectly with the sort of nervous-yet-precise songs they had been working on. By 2020, Dry Cleaning had signed with the venerated 4AD label and the next year released a debut album, New Long Leg, that earned comparisons to post-punk greats like Siouxsie and Sonic Youth. For their third studio album, Secret Love, Dry Cleaning worked with producer-slash-musician Cate Le Bon, and they stretched out a bit, mellowing the sharp corners a bit while Shaw experiments more with vocal melody than before. Check out “Cruise Ship Designer” from Secret Love right here. Another person that eagle-eared…

People in this episode

Host: Talkhouse

Guests: Florence Shaw, Sue Tompkins

Topics covered

• music
• interviews
• vocal styles
• post-punk
• album discussion

Keywords

• Florence Shaw
• Sue Tompkins
• Dry Cleaning
• Life Without Buildings
• post-punk
• New Long Leg
• Secret Love
• music interview

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dry Cleaning, Life Without Buildings, 4AD

Books & works: New Long Leg, Secret Love, Any Other City

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