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

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.

he also shares it with a notorious American serial killer.

was reading about the building (aka 'the murder castle') in which this guy operated, it's fucking batshit

The first floor was the storefront. The second story consisted of his elaborate torture rooms, which contained a chute that led to the basement. The third floor held more apartment rooms.[23] There were soundproofed rooms and mazes of hallways, some of which seemed to go nowhere. Many of the rooms were outfitted with chutes that would drop straight down to the basement where Holmes had acid vats, quicklime and a crematorium to dispose of his victims' bodies.[24] Furniture suppliers found Holmes was hiding their materials, for which he had never paid, in hidden rooms and passages throughout the building.[24] Their search made the news,[25] and investors for the planned hotel pulled out of the deal when a jeweler in the building showed them the articles.

In 1894, some police officers inspected the hotel while Holmes was out. During the inspection, they found rooms with hinged walls and false partitions, rooms linked with secret passageways, and even airtight rooms that were connected to pipelines filled with gas, which Holmes used as gas chambers.[26] Holmes would use chutes to deliver the bodies to the basement, and once there, he made use of surgical tables and an array of medical tools to dissect them before selling their organs and bones on the black market and to medical institutions.[23] The hotel was gutted by a fire started by an unknown arsonist shortly after Holmes was arrested but was largely rebuilt and used as a post office until 1938

(start at 35:50)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8rQuNHRqA4

I think I'm on Team Wet Dream over Team Chaise Longue now.

This feels like prime Lamacq-core, which sounds like archetypal damning with faint phrase but isn't meant to be. I like it - Chaise Longue over Wet Dream.

Is the UK crawling with bands like Sports Team (which imago mentioned)? Dumb name aside, their album has great songwriting, strong playing, good lyrics... what are some current RIYLs?

This just in: older teen daughter has never heard of Wet Leg.

who cares.....

Chill. It was only my totally unscientific test to see if the band's marketing push was so significant that it had reached her.

I really like the Sports Team album. Seems a step above the usual Lamacq fodder and has a certain charm about it (and also some good songs) xps