In most other years a release like this would’ve been discounted as a diversionary quirk, a niche product of people pushing back against convention or more pointedly, an in-joke which had ended up sounding better than intended.
It’s not any other year of course. 2019 has seen bands like Dry Cleaning – a quartet from South London fronted, not that this is the right word, by Florence Shaw – shift the tone of what’s classified as “indie” more substantially than at any time since the phrase was first minted.
Shaw rarely sings, reciting her lyrics instead like prose, some of which have poignance, some of which are laugh out loud funny in a sort of Patti Smith for the Instagram age way. At it’s most effective here on Viking Hair the combination of insistent, neat guitar work and her deadpan vocals takes some persistence initially, but after a few goes it’s little genius is revealed.
You can read the full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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