Much of the joy of listening to Dry Cleaning‘s “Scratchcard Lanyard” comes from vocalist Florence Shaw and her somewhat deadpan spoken word delivery of lines like “It’s a Tokyo bouncy ball/It’s an Oslo bouncy ball/It’s a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball”, “Thanks very much for the Twix”, and “Why don’t you want oven chips now?”
The band saved the best part for last though. Keep an ear open for the moment near the end when Shaw lets out an audible breath sound that acts as a percussive punctuation mark of sorts to end off the song. It kind of sounds like it’s not supposed to be there, but it also totally sounds like it should be. It’s perfect.