Wet Leg
Wet Leg
DOMINO
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Google “Wet Leg” and one of the autocomplete suggestions is “industry plant.” Something—everything—about the effortlessly cool Isle of Wight duo seems too good to be true. But it is true, and this autocomplete speaks to the band’s formidable, enigmatic allure. What does “Wet Leg” mean? Nothing, but you can spell it with emojis. Where did Wet Leg come from? A tiny island off the South Coast of England. All we knew last summer was that they delighted sofa sellers by gentrifying the chaise lounge, the bougie talisman from their perfect first single. Wet Leg’s songs interrogate universal vices and vexations—doomscrolling, dating apps, waking up late, plans falling through, self-doubt, binge-watching, awful ex-partners—all with an irresistible, voguish disenchantment. Of course this was going to catch on.
The desperately anticipated self-titled debut album elegantly straddles a too-cool-for-school/too-wet dichotomy and will appeal to any overthinking or underthinking post-millennial, to misanthropes as much as club rats and ebullient designer types. Malaise and merriment coexist in speak-sung harmony with buzzy single-string guitar nodes and cottagecore aesthetics (“Rhian Teasdale” and “Hester Chambers” even sound like Brontë characters). At its core, Wet Leg is a coming-of-age album for late-twentysomethings. After all, 30 is the new 20—we’re settling down later in life, but checking ourselves for being at parties when we’d rather be at home on the chaise lounge with a pack of warm beer watching Lord of the Rings.
Songs such as the unambiguously titled “I Don’t Wanna Go Out” and the anti-party anthem “Angelica” center on this conflict. The latter begins with a cyclical, chiming guitar as voices spread across one another, as though coming at you through a friend of a friend’s crowded living room. The sardonic and likely misinterpreted mission statement—“Good times, all the time”—peeks through the wall of magnetic guitars in the chorus, which hits like the eventual fresh air of the 2 a.m. trudge home. “Being in Love” takes the converse approach: lead vocalist Teasdale directs a fellow party-goer, “Pour me another drink / I don’t wanna have to think” and admits a twisted fondness for struggling (“I kind of like it ’cause it feels like being in love”).
As this is a (re)coming-of-age album, it includes a liberal smattering of bitter break-up tunes, which walk hand-in-hand with social media disillusionment. Rather than melancholic yearning or second-guessing—which characterizes recent indie pop releases—tracks such as “Wet Dream” and “Ur Mum” deliver devastating, hilarious rebukes to guys who think it’s appropriate to share details of their sordid sex dreams and adulterous desires. “What makes you think you’re good enough to think of me when you’re touching yourself?” Teasdale asks on the former. “Ur Mum” features her “longest and loudest scream”—she introduces it thusly—an overspill of rage directed at an ex whose choices make her feel sorry for his mother. This is juxtaposed by Chambers’ doe-eyed “dum-dums” in the background, an angry/insouciant disparity that the reposeful “Loving You” also employs. “I don’t wanna meet your girlfriend / Hope you choke on your girlfriend,” they sigh in unison over descending synths and what sounds like an accordion.
Wet Leg accomplishes more than your run-of-the-windmill debut. It proves that sometimes the hype gets it right—New York pizza really is best. Summer is the best season. Wet Leg is the best album of the year so far. And we all knew it from the first time we heard “Chaise Longue.” But more than this, the duo’s lyrics reinvigorate the well-trodden theme of post-adolescent metaphysical anxiety. Evidently, there’s just as much emotion, childishly brilliant kiss-offs, and “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing”-ness now as there was aged 18.
But here it’s funnier, more nuanced, and way cooler. Forthright facetiousness gives way to existential stream of consciousness on the magnificent, quasi-rapped closer “Too Late Now.” “Everything is going wrong / I think I changed my mind again / I’m not sure if this is the kinda life / That I saw myself living”—Teasdale’s words spill out of her mouth and tumble to her feet in the song’s goosebump-inducing coda. Even if the self-doubt never lets up, Wet Leg are inarguable proof that it’s never too late. And if it is, if they fuck this up, at least they’re taking us down with them. I’ll drink to that. Or maybe I’ll stay in.
