WET LEG a girl band from the Isle of Wight on Domino Records

Bold. This is indie promotion when nothing is selling. It reminds me of Elastica. Relying on a great first single to sell an album. And sex. Sex sells and it's in every song.

I'm watching the Tiny Desk Concert; she introduces the three guys separately, as "our band" (she does say their names, fwiw).

Their guitar sound is OK, but I find their jaded, low-energy presentation to be displeasing.

what bugs me about their general vibe is by going for both 'detached cool' and 'whimsical nonsense' they've ended up with just the weaknesses of both

Prinzhorn Dance School update

This is indie promotion when nothing is selling. It reminds me of Elastica. Relying on a great first single to sell an album.

isnt that how singles work?

From excitement to backlash before the album is out, the 90s are back!

lmao

Much of the backlash is tbf about the ludicrous amounts of unwarranted hype they're getting

itt wet leg meets wet blankets

We Emulate Terribly Let's Eat Grandma

?? I don't hear Let's Eat Grandma in this at all

not sonically, more the schoolfriend-duo-come-to-save-British-pop thing, also mostly i'm trying to make the acronym work

tread lightly before someone starts acronyming "imago"

Are they really school friends? One looked a lot older than the other in that tiny desk, but she was kind of standing in the shadows

i trust you to be kind, Definitely Joking Person

Are they really school friends? One looked a lot older than the other in that tiny desk, but she was kind of standing in the shadows

Cool to see ILX geezers discussing their ages and 'presentation'

'slightly elevated presentation' was about their costume/production values/budget/filming style, not anything else - something which is absolutely part of the reason that debut single got noticed

are we really all old and bitter enough to justifiably get angry about novelty bands getting too big too fast?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMR_L8S30aA

The only place I've encountered this band remains this thread. Maybe because I wouldn't listen to 6 Music if they paid me to.

Then again, amongst my IRL friends, “Chaise Longue” is the 2021 track I’ve heard mentioned more than any other.

it's not a bad song but it's something of a throwaway. allows drunk people to scream the lyrics at each other before they throw themselves around the bar i guess. Rock and roll!

I'm still not cynical enough to actually look into the reason for their meteoric rise but surely someone somewhere has pulled a few strings. I mean it can't just be "it's a really cool song" because there are millions of really cool songs

The best part of not living in the UK is being mostly unaware of and completely immune to whatever the UK music press is saying or hyping.

Maybe they're getting as much of a press push in the US but I wouldn't even know where to look for that kind of hype machine. I only heard "Chaise Longue" because of a generated playlist based on Lithics and Dry Cleaning.

they're getting a big push in nyc. they were supposed to play a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg (650 capacity) and got pushed to Brooklyn Steel (1800 capacity) and a $30 ticket. Not bad for your debut performance.

I've stumbled on way more Dry Cleaning hype than Wet Leg hype, fwiw. (And not that much of either. But also I'm not in the UK, sounds like it's different there.)

Anyway "Chaise Longue" is great, the other tunes are good, not sure what there is to hate here.

screw the haters, chaise longue and wet dream are bloody excellent tracks

Really like "Too Late Now" - hearing a bit of Karen O/YYYs in it.

lol @ 'the UK music press'

i think said the gramophone had the best take on them in his year end list:

Powered by cute girls, a cool video, and this excellent, double-entendre-crammed single, I can't decide if Wet Leg are the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs or the next Right Said Fred.

six of one afaic

Right Said Yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBiWrp9kkWE

i'm sorry but this is great. they're hysterical! idk about the rest of the music but this is self evidently a great single, a point that is of course confirmed by the song's very divisiveness

Debut album out April 8th? What's the delay?

ride the hype train as long as you can before you disappoint the world

Also "girl band", aren't they a bit mature for that?

i'm sorry but this is great. they're hysterical! idk about the rest of the music but this is self evidently a great single, a point that is of course confirmed by the song's very divisiveness

100%

How are they hysterical in that performance? Idgi

Quite impressed, actually; didn't realize how little they were working with until I saw that live video.

drove me nuts in that clip hearing the lead guitarist fall out of time playing that guitar figure in the chorus about half the time

Wight Overalls

this group isnt for me but count me among those not shocked that a new group with a charismatic & trendy frontperson, hook-filled singles, well-made videos and strong online presence is generating some buzz about their upcoming album. lmao @ ppl saying things like "someone must have pulled some strings"

a new group with a charismatic & trendy frontperson, hook-filled singles, well-made videos and strong online presence

but there are a thousand bands that fit this description. For what it's worth, despite this being Not My Thing, I'd much rather see a band of young women getting this kind of attention over Father Misty Kozelek #4,501 or whatever, and I don't even mean to suggest that "someone pulling strings" is necessarily an unethical or nefarious explanation for their meteoric rise. I just mean, how did this start? Was there a celebrity who tweeted enthusiastically about them? What's the equivalent now of John Peel stanning for a new group? I guess it's easy to jump to the conclusion that someone in the band's mom or dad is the CEO of Frito Lay or something, but if all it took to get an artist to Wet Leg-levels of hype was inherited wealth or industry connections, we'd all be reviving threads about Frankie Cosmos right now. I'm just curious - maybe naively so - about how a band with two songs can suddenly become this popular without someone outside the band investing either a lot of money or a lot of time into making it happen. Because, at least in the past two decades, there is a lot more precedent for that than "oh, they played a day party at SXSW and the label head who happened to be there to see someone else thought they were worth taking a chance on and it just blew up from there"

this industry plant stuff is so weird like having good management and booking agency is cheating or something, it's always been like that, of course there's money behind them they are hardly required to be fugazi

i don't like cheese lounge all that much but i can see that it is very um, shareable if you're into it? hooky and quirky and fun but also kind of indie comfort rock, so a bit ooh-so-weird but also very familiar. bet it's been played loads on 6music.

i have never heard it outside this thread. whoever mentioned prinzhorn was pretty close imo.

this industry plant stuff is so weird like having good management and booking agency is cheating or something

it's not cheating but having those things takes some, uh, effort, and is certainly not an option available to everyone. I mean obviously you can't just cold call the top booking agencies and managers and say "I've got a band, we're from this island off the English channel, come represent us"

a new group with a charismatic & trendy frontperson, hook-filled singles, well-made videos and strong online presence

but there are a thousand bands that fit this description.

not really! lol

the uk indie rock scene isn't really that vast either tbh and the shrinkage in the number of live venues only increases your chances of getting noticed by someone somewhere