Dry Cleaning(GBR)

Few bands make you lean in quite like Dry Cleaning. The south London four-piece have spent the better part of a decade carving out a sound entirely their own - frontperson Florence Shaw's coolly detached spoken-word poetry winding through a musical backdrop that draws on early 80s American hardcore, no wave, stoner rock and pastoral fingerpicking, all without ever settling into something you can easily name. In a lineage that runs from Laurie Anderson to Life Without Buildings, Shaw is simply one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music.

Their third album Secret Love - released January 2026 on 4AD and produced by Cate Le Bon at a studio in the Loire Valley - is being hailed as the finest thing they've made. A MOJO five-star Album of the Month, Record Collector's Album of the Month, and Uncut's declaration that they are "the most important British guitar band of their generation." It's a record shaped across continents, from Jeff Tweedy's Chicago studio to Sonic Studios Dublin, and it shows - tight, generous, deeply human, and somehow both restless and warm.

Dry Cleaning play The Princess Theatre for Open Season. This is the kind of show you'll be telling people about.

Open Season is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland's Strategic Partnerships Fund, and by the Australian Government through the Office for the Arts Revive Live program.