Living In The Moment of Wet Leg

photo of Wet Leg in concert in New Orleans by Victoria Conway — Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg at Tipitina’s, by Victoria Conway

The UK indie-rock duo gave Tipitina’s fleeting moments of a band realizing their stratospheric rise.

It was something about girlhood. Rhian Teasdale spun around on the sold out Tipitina’s stage with ribbons in her hair stretching to her waist. Hester Chambers whispered into the mic with a smile she tried to hide, arms covered in tattoos, long veil of blonde hair half tucked under guitar strap. A floor length prairie dress was paired with classic Nike Cortez’s and gym socks. Lisa Frank stickers covered the body of a beautiful white electric guitar. Exaggerated pastoral music flooded the loud speakers, and for a second it felt like a Bavarian man with an alphorn and a trove of women in dirndls would walk out.

But that’s not what the indie-rock duo Wet Leg came to do. Wet Leg takes you to a place in the countryside where women in long dresses and wide brimmed hats mosh in sheep fields to the sound of their own music. They take you to a cottage in the middle of nowhere just to teach you how to sit on a porch, glare, and turn domesticity on its head. They take you so you have room to thrash, kick your legs, and scream your loudest scream. Whatever picture they had painted of a quaint, quiet life was about to be shredded by guitars and synthesizers. Whatever they came to do, they were going to make certain you released your feminine joy and rage.

Halfway through 2021, Wet Leg exploded. You could not go one day without hearing “Chaise Longue.'' The debut single went viral on TikTok, and the accompanying music video has now garnered over 7.2 million views on YouTube. They emerged seemingly fully formed, deadpan gaze staring into the camera, Midsommar meets Little Women meets Wes Anderson. They sang about sex casually, made references to Mean Girls, knew they were hot, and managed to be as playful as they were existential. You get the feeling that they’re always fucking with you, just a little bit. At any moment, you could be the butt of the joke.

With Wet Leg’s stratospheric rise into the indie world came skepticism. Music magazines wanted to know how a band from the Isle of Wight suddenly had the whole post-punk world in a chokehold. Ann Powers from NPR questioned how Wet Leg was different than any other duo that came before - a fair question - and if they knew where their music was pulling from, and who exactly they were referencing. Incel’s hated them, and soft boys called them mid. While it’s fair to question a band and ask them what they’re bringing new to the table, the collective skepticism of Wet Leg, whether embellished in Pitchfork-esque rhetoric or stated in YouTube hate comments, seemed to be more than just skepticism. They were either calculated industry plants, or two women who didn’t know what they were doing. Bottom line, they weren’t worth the hype.

Tipitina’s was packed. Wet Leg was playing to a sold out, first-day-of-September-sweaty, butt-to-butt, beer-spilling-on-legs, COVID-never-happened-close crowd. It felt like summer camp for 30 year olds. Almost everyone, on some level, looked like they embraced the idea of Van Life. A man in chunky pink 70’s glasses standing next to me did the seven-hour drive from Atlanta to Tip’s just to see this show. A middle-aged woman in a bright pink prairie dress and wide brimmed hat stood close to the front, the slime green Wet Leg neon sign glowing on her skin. Nineteen-year-olds with dyed hair stood on the barricade, sharing it with Millennials and 50-year-olds who found Wet Leg from NPR.

There was anticipation in the air, the kind that buzzes around you and reverberates off of anyone and anything standing in the room. It felt like we were on a first date with this band, who went viral before they ever played a live show together. As the opening hits of the kick drum synched with Chambers’ guitar chugging, hip bobbing to the beat, her and Teasdale locked eyes. It was the look of lightning in a bottle. They weren’t used to this feeling yet. The crowd leaned in a little closer.

“I need a lie down, only just got up / I feel so uninspired, I feel like giving up / I feel like someone has punched me in the guts / But I kinda like it ‘cause it feels like being in love,” Teasdale sang into the mic, voice lilting up in excitement as the duo stomped on their pedals and strummed their guitars as fast as they could for the chorus of “Being In Love.” The audience jumped up and down as if we were filming the prom scene of an early 2000’s movie. Tension and release.

photo of Wet Leg at Tipitina's in New Orleans by Victoria Conway for My Spilt Milk — Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale of Wet Leg in New Orleans, by Victoria Conway

It was clear that Chambers and Teasdale were catching on to what an audience likes to see when it comes to performing. Over the past couple months of touring, they’ve picked up on the favorite lines of their fans, the breakdowns where people go the craziest, and they play those moments up. Teasdale’s smile was so wide in anticipation for the “Yeah, why don’t you just suck my dick” line of “Ur Mum” that she could barely get the words out. During the instrumental tag of “Too Late Now,” Chambers and Teasdale took turns spinning on stage as if it were a game, a twirl for every time one of them struck all the strings on the guitar, letting the chord and its wobbly effects ring out.

Teasdale isn’t used to the ridiculous things that crowds can do, so it was endearing to watch. For the only ballad of the set, a person near the front waved a finger puppet of a tiny plastic hand back and forth. Lighters soon followed. Teasdale laughed throughout the verse. “Don’t stop, that was nice,” she said, cutting her own lyrics off.

All of this was just edging towards the climax of “Chaise Longue.”As soon as the signature whiny guitar riff made its first sound, a middle-aged man in front of me started punching the balcony pole with passion. Warm beer was raining down, splashing onto faces as people raised their arms. The crowd knew the song so well that it almost turned into a call and response. “Excuse me? (What?) / Excuse me? (What?),” everyone screamed at Teasdale after she asked us if our muffins were buttered. Once the chorus hit, baseball caps and prairie hats came off. We were in Wet Leg church.

This was a moment that will never happen again. There is something precious about seeing a band realize in real time how fucking massive their song is. The shared look between verses that says, “Holy shit, we did something.” The genuine disbelief as a crowd mouths back the words you wrote in your bedroom with your best friend, not knowing if anyone would ever care in the slightest. The realization that right now, in this moment, people care.

Right now, Wet Leg lives in the microcosm of “Chaise Longue,” an edge of the universe that was put on the map, sparkling, wide as a field, big as the sky. We can’t all live in it forever, and it became apparent as the duo walked off the stage, no encore, nothing to follow it yet. It’s hard to tell what comes next for Wet Leg, and it’s a question that many are asking. However, as the world burns and the future turns itself inside out, does it really even matter? Aren’t the most precious things the moments we can live inside for a second of a lifetime?

A band doesn’t need to have a career to make an imprint on us. The joy in the room was feral as Wet Leg played “Chaise Longue,” and even if you were bored or unimpressed with the rest of their set, you cannot deny how much that song makes people feel alive. Maybe Wet Leg will come out with more music that’s great, or maybe they’ll disappear. Regardless, we shared a moment that was special together. It’s the seconds when we are connected that matter most.