One of the most infectious pieces of ear candy to hit the airwaves at the end of 2021 was “Chaise Longue,” the first tune from the forthcoming eponymous album from Wet Leg, a band started for fun by two friends from the Isle of Wight, who had been playing festivals in other bands before forming Wet Leg.
“Initially, we started the band because we wanted to get free entry into festivals,” says Rhian Teasdale of the band she formed with friend Hester Chambers. “We’d wanted to put the summer we just had on loop. So, I guess we wanted to make music that would fit in that setting, in that headspace, because for the most part, the bands we’d been in before took themselves a bit too seriously.” And Wet Leg’s debut captures that sense of fun, while musically being more challenging than it may seem on the surface.
After recording Wet Leg – an album that only builds on the snarky irony and Alt-Pop of “Chaise Longue” with 11 more tunes of jangly guitars, danceable beats and lyrics that while sometimes biting, always convey their messages with an underlying sense of fun – the duo released that first single and suddenly found their career building at an alarming rate, all before the April 2022 release of the album. The journey they set out on found Wet Leg opening for CHVRCHES and Idles, among others, making appearances on Jools Holland’s and Seth Meyers’ TV shows, and selling out scheduled 2022 tour dates so quickly some of those shows were moved into larger venues. That’s a lot of quick progress for a band that, according to Teasdale, “was originally just supposed to be funny.”
“Being such close friends, starting this band together was such a refreshing experience compared to other bands we’d been in before,” adds Chambers. “We help each other take risks and do things that scare us.”
“We’re not virtuoso guitarists or anything but making music isn’t about that for us,” adds Teasdale. “It’s just: ‘Does it sound good?’ Often, it’s the rough bits, the weird wonky melodies that you hold on to.”
The two singles released so far – “Chaise Longue” and “Too Late Now” apparently sound so good that stations as diverse as WXRT, WRLT, WXPN, KRVB, Indie 102.3, WNXP and KXT are only just a small sample of the huge list already supporting Wet Leg.
Photo by Hollie Fernando
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