Emo Dead Stuff Collector

Dry Cleaning “Strong Feelings”

Florence Shaw’s voice is cold and deadpan as she recites her words, which are not sung or rapped, but certainly performed with more musicality than “spoken” would suggest. She fits perfectly into her band’s grooves, which sound like music to play while driving down a highway in some kind of post-apocalyptic horror film. The tension in the sound comes and goes, but there’s always a feeling of blank-eyed forward momentum.

Just calling this song “Strong Feelings” is a little funny – yes, she’s writing about a powerful attraction to someone, but that’s all buried beneath momentary distractions, self-deprecating asides, and the outside world becoming so awful that it ruins the mood entirely. The best example here is the way the direct and unguarded phrase “kiss me” is quickly blurted out after her droll reading of the line “I’ve been thinking about eating that hot dog for hours.” Shaw is good at conveying the mundane details of furtively hiding her feelings, but leaving her reasons to your imagination. Why is she repressing this, what is she afraid of? Probably the usual stuff, but presented in this way something that ordinarily is just about low self-esteem can come off as sort of darkly glamorous.

Buy it from Bandcamp.