Produced by Cate Le Bon and recorded over three weeks in France’s Loire Valley, Secret Love plays like a confessional passed through Dry Cleaning’s unmistakable filter: sly, restrained, and emotionally perceptive without ever tipping into sentimentality. Anchored by Florence Shaw’s coolly conversational delivery and the band’s taut, textural arrangements, the album explores romance, connection, and longing with both sincerity and wry distance.

RANGE spoke with drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard over Zoom from London about the meaning behind Secret Love, the unusually close-knit recording process, and the musical “guilty pleasures” that quietly shaped the record.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does Secret Love mean to you, and where did the title come from?

NB: It was quite a secret process, recording an album like we did. You’re completely sealed off from everything. You’re just taking the people involved in the making of the record and then hiding somewhere and doing it in private from the rest of the world. “Secret Love” was also one of the tracks on the record that we all really loved. It was one of the songs everyone was especially proud of, and we wanted to showcase that. It’s also quite a Dry Cleaning thing for us to put light and shade into one creative idea, and we just felt that “Secret Love” summed up the work best.

LM: The album title always seems to come down to whatever theme everyone gravitates toward. When we were making a list of potential titles, everyone seemed to want it to be “Secret Love.” My favourite thing about Dry Cleaning is how the meaning of our work changes every day — how we feel about it, how we emotionally respond. Like the title of our band or the album, even the meaning of our songs can change daily.

What was the recording process like?

LM: We were in France for three weeks, following a week of pre-production in London. One of my favourite elements of our process was a day just before pre-production when we listened to music together. The five of us — Florence Shaw, Tom Dowse, Nick Buxton, me, and Cate Le Bon — went into a room and just showed each other music for about 10 hours. I didn’t realize how important it was to build a common language and reference point for each other.

It sounds like you developed a kind of shared language during the recording. At what point did the “love” aspect of the title start to resonate — was that about romance, or something else?

LM: For me, it varies so much. The album felt like a secret for a long time, as more people were slowly exposed to it before we officially released it. So I guess I was focused more on the secret than the love.

NB: I was interested in the love element because that’s not necessarily something people associate with our band or the way Flo writes. There are definitely more overt love songs on this album, and it kind of represented a sort of coming out for us as a band that can write about the most common things in popular music. We can create love songs in our own unique way that still maintains our identity.

Do you feel like there are hidden elements in the record, or is the idea of secrecy more about the process than the songs themselves?

LM: The secret is maybe the trust and love that a band cultivates while recording together. I think the record’s diversity of directions and genres reflects this trust and the confidence it brings us. That trust is embedded into the music but wouldn’t necessarily be evident in the final product.

NB: People will always look for something extra with us, whether it’s there or not. On “Cruise Ship Designer,” Flo talks about hidden messages in her work, but ultimately she’s just having fun with the work and the audience. But to have that fun, trust between us — and between us and our fans — is necessary to allow her to be as silly or sincere as she wants to be.