The current crop of guitar-led bands are doing remarkable things. It’s fantastic to witness the comeback of bands after years and years of dominance of solo artists. Dry Cleaning take guitar music beyond the boundaries of genre and they are in good company here…with The Snuts, Bleach Lab, Piqued Jacks, Inhaler, workfriends, Iceage et. al. Welcome to Riff Raff vol. 6 and get booking those gigs!
The moment we have been waiting for has arrived, when we can get excited about Dry Cleaning. Yet I find myself worrying about Dry Cleaning too, so it’s a mixed bag really. I am not talking about the anticipation of emerging from lockdown or the pleasures of having someone else do your laundry once again. I am of course, referring to the recent release of Dry Cleaning’s debut album New Long Leg.
To me it’s more than just your average album release. It’s a new album with a band that really has something going for them. Surrounding the laconic spoken word delivery of Florence Shaw (here is a name you might come to know - more later) is a tightly-wound trio of drum, bass, guitar; peddling away in a style that isn’t revolutionary but climbs inside your ears nonetheless. Because of how Dry Cleaning brings these elements together, there is no danger of them making music that drops into the background. Rather the opposite in fact - put them on and you’ll find everything else drops into the background, while the nagging riffs and Florence’s seemingly random diatribe arrests you.
It’s what bands are meant to do and that’s what has got me worried.
Dry Cleaning is in good company. The current crop of guitar-led bands are doing similarly remarkable things. It’s fantastic to witness the comeback of bands after years and years of dominance of solo artists. I mean, what was the last band you can name that keeps hifalutin company with Drake, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, J Balvin, Billie Eilish and that lot? (if you just said BTS, you know too much and therefore you also know that’s not my point).
It might have been Coldplay. And Coldplay is a hangover from the age of bands (i.e. the 20th Century). They broke through in the year 2000 and that, I don’t need to tell you, is over two decades ago. Of course there have been a few bands that have broken through into the higher echelons of the streaming world - Glass Animals, Imagine Dragons and The 1975 are good examples - but these have relied upon making a particular brand of music that works in the streaming world (as in ear candy, and not short on 80s references to boot).
In the streaming economy where penny fractions operate, earnings for bands are a huge problem, but a bigger problem is getting established in the first place. It’s hard enough to get one million streams, never mind the 36 million required to make $100,000. And even if the viability threshold can be crossed one year, to sustain that success year after year is almost impossible.
It doesn’t end there of course. Most bands are struggling to get representation from labels and publishers, since bands have not been the hot thing to sign. In these days of the attention economy, music fans find it easier to identify with solo artists. For years - perhaps since the dawn of Coldplay, we’ve struggled to know the names or personalities of anyone in the band other than the lead singer. Contrast that to the 70s, 80s and 90s when band members were individually adored and popular in their own right - enough to form spin off bands, solo careers and best-selling memoirs.
So come on. Let’s give it up for bands. Labels - if you are struggling to find new bands to sign, why not encourage them by way of a stipend - not an advance that’s recoupable against royalties, but a guaranteed living wage. In fact, we could go further. A service like Bandcamp could step up to its name, and help fund bands in particular. In these days of industry data, it is becoming possible to ‘de-risk’ those huge A&R investments with predictive analysis that can reveal a glimpse into a bands future potential earnings. Bands might be paid a salary based on that kind of data.
Reading the recent interview with Dry Cleaning in the superb ‘new bands’ magazine So Young, it seems the band is most excited about the upcoming opportunity to get back onto the live scene - something that applies to the vast majority of artists but resonates even more with guitar-drum-bass combos, I suppose. The good news is that bands are back, so when the time comes get back out there and support your local guitar bands folks!
Dry cleaning is the insidious guitar riffing of Tom Dowse, hooky bass of Lewis Maynard, unfussy drumming of Nick Buxton and the laconic, seemingly random spoken word delivery of Florence Shaw. New Long Leg is available now on Bandcamp.
Riff Raff is here to support and promote young bands and guitar-first artists who can write pop tunes the old-fashioned way i.e. that make you want to listen. We are always keen to feature bands that take guitar music beyond the boundaries of genre. To fully discover some of the bands on this edition, many of whom have released recent albums, go and buy their latest records and then book to see them live.