From Dry Cleaning to Sinead O’Brien and Talk Show, today’s hottest indie artists often sound like they’re at a poetry reading
‘It feels like acting,” says Florence Shaw, frontwoman – not singer – of the
London indie band Dry Cleaning. “Speaking your lyrics is acting, more than singing is. Everyone knows what it sounds like in a person’s voice when they are irritated, or when they are in love. The voice changes, and it doesn’t whack you in the face – it can be quite subtle and creep up on you more.”
If you spend any time in small
British venues, it is likely you have noticed there are quite a few bands like Dry Cleaning around at the moment – bands that don’t employ a singer so much as someone who declaims their words, and that are getting noticed. Do Nothing and Black Country, New Road have been winning admirers; Talk Show have been signed by Felix White, late of the Maccabees, to his Yala! Records label; Sinead O’Brien’s new single is on Chess Club, the label that brought the world Mumford & Sons, MØ, Wolf Alice, Sundara Karma and more.