Dry Cleaning Draw Their Way ARound The World
Portrait by Max Miechowski.
God help me, I am tired of commissioning interviews.
We get to spend time with so many interesting and complex individuals here at Monster Children, that when the opportunity comes to do an editorial piece with them, if I can help it, we’ll seek out their creative perspective in a way that is a bit more interesting than just asking them questions. There will always be a place for interviews, but there’s more to people than their words. ‘Show, don’t tell’, as the old adage goes.
Some years back, we had done a piece with Florence Shaw’s sketches and paintings, so when Dry Cleaning became available to do a little editorial something as a part of their massive tour in promotion of their excellent new album, Secret Love, we thought we’d ask them to do something strange: draw the world and tell us about it, and guitarist Tom Dowse delivered. Get to know them a little bit better below, and then see them now on their ANZ tour, linked here.
Dry Cleaning Tour Dates:
2 June 2026 | Wellington, New Zealand | meow NUI
3 June 2026 | Auckland, New Zealand | The Hollywood Avondale
6 June 2026 | Fremantle, Australia | The Naval Store
7 June 2026 | Ballarat, Australia | Ballarat Civic Hall
11 June 2026 | Hobart, Australia | Dark Mofo Festival 2026
These drawings came from a train ride we made from Portland to Seattle on a tour in 2021. It was quite a fraught trip; the height of Covid, trying to stay clear of it so we could eventually perform on the Tonight show in NY at the end of it etc. We had to use planes and trains which made that very difficult and I think those anxieties filtered into these scenes. I often don’t draw the places I like a lot because I’m busy enjoying them and this is an example of using drawing to get through a tricky time.
We spend a lot of our touring life on motorways and I’m always fascinated by pylons. They have a strange monolithic quality to me, like they are channeling more than just domestic electricity. This one was bathed in light from the festival below- Haldern Pop in the Lower Rhein region of West Germany. I keep a folder on my phone of pylons that I refer to if I’m stuck for something to draw.
The process of drawing really helps me on tour. You can often spend large amounts of time waiting in uncomfortable places, feeling a bit isolated or just not sure what to do with yourself so to turn that dead time into something creative helps to keep me anchored and my mental health stable. I particularly love how alternately odd and majestic landscapes can be and I try and use all the time I spend gawping out of van windows to spot things that make me want to do a drawing.
Japan is truly magical. I’m not sure how successful I was at capturing it but I enjoyed giving it a go. Temples and shrines really do resonate with energy, they seem to have been constructed with a profound understanding of the landscape and the wider universe. What I really love about Japan is how strong its cultural sense of itself is so that when it adopts forms from western culture, (and I’m thinking of rock music, punk, hardcore etc) they take those forms and infuse them with their own identity making it so unique.
I had assumed Tokyo would be chaotic and overwhelming, which it certainly can be, but I found lots of mental space there I didn’t expect to find just a stones throw from our hotel in Shibuya which is one of the busiest districts. I enjoyed getting about Tokyo on my own once a very nice ticket attendant showed me how to use the Metro and I saw a bunch of exhibitions and galleries as well as some obligatory guitar pedal shopping. Being there and drawing seemed to refresh me mentally and creatively and I can’t wait to go back.
We are lucky to be able to play in Ireland quite a bit. We have a good fanbase there and it’s always a good time. I like the people in Ireland a lot; they seem close to poetry/folklore/mythology/music in a way that modern life doesn’t often value anymore but it’s their real power. I’ve lost count of the times we’ve made the drive from London to Holyhead to cross the Irish Sea- It feels like a ritual!
I find drawing landscapes gives me a way to express myself without having to be specific or overly descriptive. That’s one of the reasons I generally avoid depicting people but every now and then some characters pop up and I get inspired to try and describe them. The guy on the left jumped out of his car in heavy traffic in the city of Groningen to relieve himself. A football match had just finished and everyone was cheering. At the other end of the spectrum is Roy Montgomery, on the right, who we played a couple of shows with in New Zealand. As someone I have a huge admiration for it was surreal to sit and have a beer with him and share stories of our grandparents and family histories.
Scandinavia, in general, is very beautiful and we spent a portion of our tour supporting Nick Cave driving around it. Sweden in particular is so densely forested that your imagination starts to run wild and when the sun is out you feel like you’re hallucinating. It feels fresh and bright but ancient at the same time.
Chicago is my favourite city in the United States. I don’t have many drawings from there because I’m usually doing something and enjoying it too much and we’ve made some really lovely friends there. I feel like it has everything I like about cities- scale, skyscrapers, good food, lots of music with a history of great bands and the people there have a really cool mix of forces. Very down to earth and unpretentious but with a strong sense of creativity and refinement- a valuing of high and low culture that really appeals to me. This view from Grant Park where I was strolling one early morning, just before I went to the Art Institute of Chicago where I could easily spend whole days.
It’s a trip of a lifetime to play in Australia and seeing the Opera house for the first time is such an unusual experience. You feel you know it intimately from having seen it so often recreated on screen or in print but it’s not till you’re standing right in front of it; towering over you that you realise how truly odd it is. Like all the best architecture it feels like it landed from another planet, unfolded onto the harbour and made itself at home. Australia has always been so supportive of Dry Cleaning, I think our first ever radio interview was for Triple R, so it’s a huge pleasure to be able to return.
