Dry Cleaning, Village Underground, London

Lit only from the back, Florence sing-speaks her scorching words while draped over her microphone, accompanied on stage by a music stand, where some sheaves of paper and a plastic dog toy spend the evening. Initially the temptation is to assume she uses these items as some kind of safety blanket, which they may have been when Dry Cleaning started this tour, but at this point, they've become part of her on-stage persona, which comes fully into its own as the night progresses. Her minimal movement seems theatrically attuned to keep the audience locked-in, and is excellently contrasted by Tom and Lewis, who are doing plenty of thrashing and writhing either side of her.

The group take the opportunity to air a couple of new tracks - ‘Jam Jar’ and ‘Strong Feelings’ - which slot seamlessly in among the rest, and suggest what we already knew: that their debut album is going to be a scorcher. While excitement has been bubbling throughout the crowd all night, it’s with the band’s sardonic salute to the royal family, ‘Magic of Meghan’, that the corn starts to pop and people really get jostling. This is carried into the last song of the night, ‘Conversation’, which is all the fiercer and monumental, loosed from its lo-fi recorded version, building to a hypnotically dissonant finale.

“We don’t take it lightly that so many people have come to see us in our home town,” Florence announces towards the end of the set. They’d better get used to it – they’ll only be playing bigger and bigger venues each time they return to the capital for the foreseeable future.

Tags: Dry Cleaning, Reviews, Live Reviews