Hit my head all day: This week at South

There’s only one new release landing this week, but it’s a strong one - and a good way to start the year. Dry Cleaning return with Secret Love, their third album and first produced by Cate Le Bon. It’s a record that builds on Stumpwork rather than stepping away from it, tightening the band’s sound while giving it more room to move.

Written collectively in Peckham rehearsal spaces and recorded across Chicago, Dublin and the Loire Valley, the album leans into clipped post-punk, dry humour and uneasy atmosphere. Opener Hit My Head All Day sets the tone, pairing taut guitars and breathy synths with Florence Shaw’s typically precise, deadpan delivery, circling themes of influence, persuasion and trust.

Secret Love is available on limited apricot-coloured vinyl, with an exclusive signed print while stocks last.

→ Recommended

This week’s recommended album is Desertshore by Nico, one of the starkest, most uncompromising records of the early ’70s. Released in 1970 and recorded largely at night, Desertshore strips everything back: harmonium, voice, space. What’s left feels ritualistic, almost suspended outside of time.

Produced by John Cale, the album sits somewhere between folk, and devotional music, with Nico’s voice pushed to the foreground - solemn, unwavering, and deliberately austere. Tracks like Janitor of Lunacy and My Only Child carry a quiet gravity that rewards close listening rather than casual play. An album that still feels stark and unresolved over fifty years on.

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