Produced by Cate Le Bon, Secret Love started life in Peckham rehearsal spaces, all members — frontperson Florence Shaw, guitarist Tom Dowse, drummer Nick Buxton and bassist Lewis Maynard — writing, playing and responding to each other in the room. The follow-up to Stumpwork evolved through sessions at Jeff Tweedy's Chicago studio the Loft and with Gilla Band's Alan Duggan and Daniel Fox at Sonic Studios in Dublin, and finally with Cate Le Bon at Black Box in the Loire Valley. The south London four-piece take their place in rock's avant garde, catalysing the Reaganite paranoia of early 80s US punk and hardcore with the dry strut of Keith Richards, stoner rock, dystopian degradation, playful no wave and pastoral fingerpicking.