UK post-punk stars Dry Cleaning have had an exciting 2021, what with the critical praise for their debut album, New Long Leg. Now, they’ve shared a special one-off double A-side single: “Bug Eggs” and “Tony Speaks!”
Recorded at Rockfield Studios in July and August 2020 during the same session for New Long Leg, these rarities were, up until now, only available in an expanded Japanese edition of the album. Lead vocalist Florence Shaw said that “‘Bug Eggs’ is about the confidence that comes with age, fragility and sexual desire.” Meanwhile, the lyrics to ‘Tony Speaks!’ were “written days after the Conservative party won the December 2019 UK election. I was thinking about climate change, environmental catastrophes and political campaigning.”
“I think our temperaments are important to the band,” Shaw recently told DIY of how the band has developed. “We’re a strange mix of pessimists and optimists. I think that’s something that creates a lot of the atmosphere of our music. A tension between two opposite things […] I think a lot of the writing that I do is trying to work out how I feel about things. I’ll have all these different bits of writing and I’ll think ‘I think these are all about love’, I’ll put them on a page and then I’ll think, ‘Does that help?'”
Listen to “Bug Eggs” and “Tony Speaks!” above. New Long Leg is out now via 4AD. Get it here.
