Dry Cleaning have announced a new album called Secret Love. The follow-up to 2022’s Stumpwork is set for release on January 9 via 4AD. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘Hit My Head All Day’, which you can check out below.
Secret Love took shape over a series of sessions at Jeff Tweedy’s Chicago studio the Loft, with Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios in Dublin, and with producer Cate Le Bon at Black Box in the Loire Valley. Drummer Nick Buxton said they wanted to explore the “radically different things that can be achieved by going to different people.” Le Bon commented, “Being in a room with them and hearing that vitality and life force that exists between them all, it’s such a unique expression.”
“There’s a tension between feeling like I want to hide, but at the same time a certain yearning to be seen by people and to grow – but also feeling quite mortified about that,” frontperson Florence Shaw said of the LP. “If I want things to be more open or blunter, a bit less sophisticated, that would be helped by not allowing myself to ringfence the whole thing.”
You can hear that directness in ‘Hit My Head All Day’, a bid against hopelessness and political manipulation that’s gnawingly catchy. “The song is about manipulation of the body and mind,” Shaw said. “The lyrics were initially inspired by the use of misinformation on social media by the far right. There are powerful people that seek to influence our behaviour for their own gain; to buy certain things, to vote a certain way. I find it hard to read people’s intentions and decide who to trust, even in everyday life. It’s easy to fall under the influence of a sinister stranger who seems like a friend. We took a playful approach to the song. At one point it had harmonica on it instead of a vocal. At the demo stage we were inspired by There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Sly and the Family Stone.”
Hit My Head All Day Cover Artwork:
Hit My Head All Day Tracklist:
1. Hit My Head All Day
2. Cruise Ship Designer
3. My Soul / Half Pint
4. Secret Love (Concealed in a Drawing of a Boy)
5. Let Me Grow and You’ll See the Fruit
6. Blood
7. Evil Evil Idiot
8. Rocks
9. The Cute Things
10. I Need You
11. Joy
