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

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

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"

moreso than either of those, over the last 10 years theres way more precedent for "they released some really catchy songs for free online and blew up", why does it have to be more complicated than that? obv there are always Other Bands Just As Good, but would it really be a satisfying answer to know the granular details of exactly why one music video got more popular than other music videos of comparable quality? idk i just dont get how this is a big anomaly.

domino has been behind them since "chaise lounge" was released, which is not something that anybody was trying to hide. have they talked about how they got signed? it seems to me like domino realized they had a great single and a band w/ a lot of (indie) commercial potential on their hands and did invest in them -- the videos clearly took a bit of money and they got some bottom of the poster festival billings and "bbc introducting" radio play. but it's not like you can just press a button. the song is clearly connecting w/ ppl, most indie bands aren't routinely putting up 1 million views on youtube every video. this seems like a "both things can be true" situation insofar as clearly they have one of the bigger indie labels behind them & are also tapping into a real audience. this mindmeld between industry and fans isn't something that happens very often or else it would, um, happen way more often. the game isn't actually rigged.

i'd also point out that "chaise lounge" is basically like milennial retro music. it's early 00s NME revival let alone actual post punk. indie music has long ago away from the spiky, ironic, stylized, catchy etc. what are the big indie albums this year? snail mail, japanese breakfast, faye webster? zooming out, who are the big indie (or "indie") bands/artist of the last x number of years? war on drugs, clairo, soccer mommy, angel olsen, mitski, big thief? wet leg are coming at things from a totally different direction. they're not reinventing the wheel by any stretch but they're offering up a version of rock music that ppl have generally liked at previous points in history but hasn't really been prevalent in the scene for a while. that part doesn't really take a genius to figure out

started a band playing a currently in vogue style, played some festivals as 11am openers and got noticed by an indie rock label does not seem like a particularly bizarre or abnormal story

Rhian has been making solo stuff and I believe singing with Plastic Mermaids who certainly were playing bigger venues than Wet Leg have been (so far) in a BBC 6Music zone for some years. It's not that inconceivable or even that egregious that she could then pass a demo to a tour manager she's stuck on a bus with on the way to Norfolk on a rainy Tuesday.

For what it's worth my kids cannot stop singing it, whereas Cannonball they find dull and they can't understand the words.

again it wasn't a criticism just sort of perplexed by the idea that a marketable band gets noticed and a label or management company invests in them is somehow scandalous

they are managed by Paradigm which is huge, their clients include everyone from Pusha T to Sylvan Esso to the Pogues to Zedd to Wynona Judd

https://www.paradigmagency.com/music/

I'm sure they got noticed on the internet or live organically but all the media attention and type of gigs they are getting doesn't just happen

which, again, welcome to the music business

remember when lana del rey was an industry plant

xxp I don't think it has much in common w/"Cannonball"; I wouldn't necessarily expect a fan of one song to be into the other

wet leg are coming at things from a totally different direction. they're not reinventing the wheel by any stretch but they're offering up a version of rock music that ppl have generally liked at previous points in history but hasn't really been prevalent in the scene for a while. that part doesn't really take a genius to figure out

― J0rdan S., Thursday, 9 December 2021 21:29 (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it has never gone out of style in the UK! every year there are more bands like this. Sports Team were a recent example

most of those acts don't really cross over to american attention at all anymore though

the extent of the conspiracist stuff that comes with industry plant accusations (sorry lol just having fun there) that i'd actually seriously endorse is just they likely had some existing industry connections in order to get signed & blow up out of nowhere before they'd even played a show (they didn't start playing live until after "chaise longue" had already blown up). which it seems is pretty well established via plastic mermaids connection etc

i get why people like the band, they're not terrible, just the amount of hype has been ridiculous compared to the substance of the two alright singles they had out. i suspect the drawn out time between the single & album release, which contributes to how ridiculous the buzz feels, is likely just due to covid etc. though, like if it weren't for that they'd probably have been able to have had the album out october or something

Longue Covid (sorry)

I'm checking out Sports Team now; this album from last year sounds good!

(they didn't start playing live until after "chaise longue" had already blown up).

They did, though? They're on festival bills from two years ago.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BytS5_EhgIC/

https://www.instagram.com/p/By_ImsHhjKl/

well lol in the press release for the album they said they hadn't played a single show before this year

I dunno, maybe with the current band

https://onthewight.com/fat-earthers-luna-tear-and-wet-leg-to-raise-the-roof-at-the-rose/

current lineup*

clips from their 2019 shows here:

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

this is not my area at all, but as far as explaining the success of the band, i feel like "chaise lounge" is also horny in a unique kind of way

that early stuff sounds like cocorosie or something

that opening clip is probably the most unpromising clip of music I've heard in a while lol

Detached horny

I wonder how much they paid for this industry endorsement, though... https://www.facebook.com/bathyspheral/posts/409085970578579

I looked at the credits on the single and a couple of people in this thread might recognise the drummer's name, a little board searching suggests.

Was he the drummer for Gay Dad?

xp (specifically NickB and emil.y, not to be too gnomic)

LOL, don't think it's the same guy though.

ha i just searched and that would be pretty amazing if it was true but i don't think it is. who knows though? that guy's a friend of ilxor chewshabadoo, they dj together a lot

Haha, not the same guy - but that’s funny and I’ve passed it on to him.

yeah he might want to edit his discogs page. otoh dj the drummer for wet leg does have a certain ring about it

I don't know anything about this band, but when they get home today I'll ask my teens if they've heard or heard of them, and if the answer is yes, then indeed the group's marketing machine is next level. And if the answer is no, and the band hasn't reached them yet, then the band's rise, or "rise," may indeed just be more of a run of the mill word of mouth thing.

Only old people like us listen to indie rock anymore

that's not true at all

signed, has felt old and out of place at many shows

At least ask a college kid.

Lol, Noel. Not the same guy - it's not that unusual a name, tbf, he also shares it with a notorious American serial killer.

I admit to also being perplexed by the "industry plant", "pulling some strings" stuff. Getting signed and having management/publicists isn't the same thing as being a plant! There are no "how to be a DIY band (sponsored by Volkswagen)" shenanigans that I can see here, unless I'm missing something.

Yeah ime it's always teenagers and only teenagers who want to learn stuff like Bon Iver and Mac deMarco.