"Anna Calls from the Arctic" Released: 26 July 2022
"Gary Ashby" Released: 7 September 2022
"No Decent Shoes for Rain" Released: 11 October 2022
Stumpwork is the second studio album by the English post-punk band Dry Cleaning, released on 21 October 2022 through independent label 4AD Records. Preceded by four singles, it is also the band's second consecutive record to be produced by John Parish through the independent record label 4AD.
The album sees the band stylistically expand upon their previous record New Long Leg (2021), incorporating elements of genres such as jangle pop and funk while dealing with themes such as grief and consumerism. Like its predecessor, Stumpwork was acclaimed, landing on several year-end lists and winning the award for Best Recording Package at the 2024 Grammys.
Background and recording
In 2021, shortly after their commercially successful and critically lauded debut album New Long Leg,[1] Dry Cleaning began writing material for their next album.[2] The restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic that had forced their debut to be recorded in two weeks[3] also created an environment in which they spent a considerably longer amount of time to write.[4][1]
The band decided to work again with producer John Parish and engineer Joe Jones to make what would become Stumpwork.[5] After a two-day rehearsal at Factory Studios in Bristol,[5] Dry Cleaning recorded between J&J Studios in Bristol and Rockfield Studios in Wales;[4] the former studio's sessions occurred in October 2021, with the latter in both October and December 2021.[6] Lyrically, Stumpwork is a departure from vocalist Florence Shaw's approach of reciting found texts.[7] Shaw opted to largely improvise in the studio,[8] based at least in part on observations made during walks though flea markets and London streets.[3] She additionally sourced lyrics from old press cuttings archived by Edda Tasiemka.[9]
Title and artwork
The album is named after a style of embroidery from the 17th century,[10] a word that Shaw found pleasing.[11]
The band enlisted Rottingdean Bazaar (a creative duo consisting of James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks), photographer Annie Collinge, and graphic designer Claire Huss to create the artwork. Rottingdean Bazaar had previously worked with Dry Cleaning when creating the music video for "Scratchcard Lanyard".[12] The front cover features a photograph of a bar of soap decorated with pubic hair spelling out the album title.[7][8] Collinge told Creative Review her account of the inspiration behind the design choice: "I had taken an iPhone picture of a blue soap with a curly hair on it, and Rottingdean Bazaar had done lots of things with pube lettering so suddenly it sparked an idea".[12] The front cover art was met with strong reactions, with many finding it nauseating.[13] To the band members, the divisive nature of the cover was an unexpected byproduct. In an interview for Uncut, guitarist Tom Dowse said: "I thought it was a really beautiful image with a good sense of humour. Very intimate and quite moving. Then when people started to say it was disgusting, I was like, 'Oh, really? Are we that prudish about things?'"[14]
Stephen Malkmus (pictured) was a primary influence for guitarist Tom Dowse on Stumpwork.
Style
Like its predecessor, the album has been categorised as a post-punk album,[16][17] though on Stumpwork the band incorporated a new set of influences that invoked additional genre descriptors, most notably jangle pop[5][18] and funk,[19][20] whereas on New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning prioritised relatively straightforward,[18] groove-oriented rock.[5] Florence Shaw largely retains the qualities of her vocal performance with her utilisation of spoken word with a conversational, deadpan delivery.[2] While some commentators have labelled this as "sprechgesang",[14][15] a vocal style that simultaneously blends spoken word with singing, others were mindful to distinguish this from the more accurate description of spoken word or narration that is occassionally interspersed with sung vocals.[19][21]
Stumpwork reinforces the jangle-pop element that New Long Leg had only hinted at,[18] most notably on its three shortest tracks, "Kwenchy Kups",[16][18] "Gary Ashby",[7][9] and "Don't Press Me".[19] The latter two were considered by Scott Russell of Paste magazine to be "The tracks that followed New Long Leg the closest".[5] In particular, critics have likened guitarist Tom Dowse's performance to former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.[8][14] Otherwise, the band introduced a new set of musical influences for Stumpwork, resulting in a more varied album[2][7][22] that often features more sombre[23] and moody textures.[3][5] The album has additionally seen comparisons to funk—a genre of specific interest to bassist Lewis Maynard[24]—and the band Pavement.[21] Dowse told The New York Times that "I was thinking a lot about Stephen Malkmus when I was doing my guitar parts, that sort of wonkiness," revealing that he used a Jazzmaster guitar on the album in an effort to channel the sound from various rock bands from the 1990s such as Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth.[11]
Themes and lyrics
In the lead-up to the album, two band members' relatives, to whom the record was dedicated, died: Maynard's mother and Dowse's grandfather.[5] The grief stemming from those events inspired Dry Cleaning to write "No Decent Shoes for Rain".[21] Elsewhere, grief manifested in a separate context on "Gary Ashby",[25] a song about the titular family tortoise that had escaped during pandemic lockdown.[7] Shaw elaborated in Uncut magazine that the story of "Gary Ashby" is fictional and that she had never own a tortoise before, adding "I wish I could have one, but I don't have the lifestyle that could accommodate a pet at all."[14] Another common theme is commentary on a dystopian late stage capitalistic society juxtaposed with an embrace of consumerism. This is made explicit on tracks such as "Anna Calls from the Arctic" with the lines "Nothing works / Everything's expensive / And opaque and privatised / My shoe organising thing arrived / Thank God".[5] Also, on "Hot Penny Day"—named after a medieval tradition in Honiton, Devon, England where the wealthy would toss down burning hot pennies toward local crowds arriving to attend the town market—Shaw opens with the line "If I could live across the road from a boot fair, wouldn't that be something?"[15]
Besides the aformentioned themes of grief and consumerism, the album explores surrealism and everyday mundane activities,[16][22] and brief moments of humour injected via non-sequitors.[15] While Stumpwork deals with many subjects, some more dour than others, Shaw has said that the band's intention was to "set out to write an optimistic record. There's a lot of humour in what we do."[24]
Singles, promotion, and release
Dry Cleaning released four attached singles in anticipation for Stumpwork. On 14 June 2022, the band revealed the lead single, "Don't Press Me", with the announcement for the album and an accompanying music video by Peter Millard.[26] The video was described by Kieran Press-Reynolds in Pitchfork as "cartoon versions of the band's faces rolling around like bouncy balls."[2] Then on 26 July, "Anna Calls from the Arctic" was released with a statement that the track was inspired by John Barry film scores and calls with a friend who had worked in the Arctic.[27] Following two more singles, "Gary Ashby" on 7 September[28] and "No Decent Shoes for Rain" on 11 October,[29]Stumpwork was released on 21 October 2022,[30] subsequently reaching no. 11 on the UK Albums Chart.[31]
According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Stumpwork received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 from 22 critic scores.[36] Another aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 8.4 out of 10 based on 24 critical reviews.[35]
In a five star review for the NME, Patrick Clarke called Stumpwork "a bold leap forward, one that sets the band apart from their contemporaries and defies categorization".[21] In Paste, Scott Russell said that while it "has enough in common with its predecessor so as not to throw fans for a loop," it "is very much its own moody, nuanced animal, an expressive and expectation-defying showcase of Dry Cleaning's blossoming sound."[5] Connor Fenton, a critic writing for Dork magazine, similarly said that it is "Packed with the same strangely comforting weirdness and entrancing rhythms of their first album," continuing with "Rhythmically, the band have found new lengths to subvert expectations, with a driving force behind every song that provides a steady stage for guitar fills and spoken word highlights."[22]
In reference to the band's efforts to broaden their musical style from the "straight-ahead" New Long Leg, Heather Phares opined in a review for AllMusic that Stumpwork's "varied styles reflect Dry Cleaning's growing confidence", adding that its "warmth, sensuality, and humor reveal their originality even more fully."[18] Likewise, John Amen thought that "The band effectively synthesize various templates, showcasing their reconfiguration of everything from goth-pop to new wave to contemporary post-punk",[25] while Hal Horowitz over in the magazine American Songwriter lauded the band's willingless to "move their boundaries further afield regardless of appealing to a bigger audience."[1] In a negative review, Mark Beaumont of The Independent gave Stumpwork two stars out of five, feeling that the band was "perhaps struggling for new ways to mess with music".[20]
Kory Grow of Rolling Stone felt that Shaw's newfound approach of improvising lyrics made her "stream-of-consciousness a little more coherent."[8] Multiple critics have singled out Shaw's role in the band, praising her vocal delivery and lyrics as the album's primary appeal.[7][17][23] Cat Woods of The Telegraph stated that, in absence of the fatigue Shaw felt in her personal life that had informed the writing of New Long Leg, "On Stumpwork, there's a greater confidence to her delivery, which seems even wilder and weirder."[3] Writing for Pitchfork, Kieran Press-Reynolds said "Part of the thrill is the sheer unpredictability of her monologues".[2]
While praise has often been focused on Shaw, reviewers have also noted the quality of the intrumentals, primarily in relation to their interaction with Shaw. As said by Tom Pinnock in Uncut, "If the music and lyrics are both impressive, though, it's the interaction between them that makes Stumpwork such a triumph. They work together and against each other, pushing and pulling, fighting arrhythmically or slipping into step as the moment demands."[14] Elsewhere, Victoria Segal in Mojo wrote that "The band... expand and contract around her with giddy invention",[10] and Scott Dransfield of Under the Radar said "in consideration of her lyrical style and the band's knotty arrangements, it really coheres in a satisfying way."[17] Hayley Scott of The Quietus was a bit more reserved in their assessment of the instrumentals. "Lyrically, Stumpwork triumphs over anything produced by their contemporaries, but that might have been to the detriment of the music, which bravely evades the instrumental vitality of their debut"; however, Scott would then add "But it is an album rooted in grief... and with that knowledge, Stumpwork suddenly makes a lot more sense.[23]
Overall, Dave Simpson of The Guardian found that, in contrast to Dry Cleaning's previous material, "everything is slightly more refined, melodious and focused."[19] In The Irish Times, Siobhán Kane felt that Stumpwork "is richer, and with a surprising warmth at its core."[9] One track in particular, the seven minute long "Liberty Log", caught the attention of a few critics: Rob Moura of PopMatters called it the "finest song and an arguable peak in Dry Cleaning's young body of work",[15] while in Record Collector, Daryl Easlea believed the song shows "that there is plenty of scope for the group to survive their current flavour of the month-ness."[4] Rating the album 9 out of 10, Ross Horton thought that "It feels as though the band are having a second go at a first impression, and it's a much more muscular and robust effort as a result, while also showcasing more colours, more ideas, more craft", concluding that "Stumpwork is an essential album, and one of the very best of 2022."[37]
"Swampy" / "Sombre Two" Released: 14 February 2023
On 14 February 2023, Dry Cleaning released two outtakes from Stumpwork, "Swampy" and "Sombre Two", as singles.[63] The songs were taken from an upcoming EP entitled Swampy which additionally contains remixes of "Hot Penny Day" and "Gary Ashby", and the demo "Peanuts". Swampy was released on 1 March 2023.[61]
Track listing
All lyrics are written by Florence Shaw; all music is composed by Dry Cleaning.[64]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
