The stage in this snug south London venue is far too small for Wet Leg, the indie rock revelation of 2021 – physically and figuratively. It’s a squeeze for all five touring members of the band, centred on old music college friends Hester Chambers and Rhian Teasdale. The two wield twin guitars; you can just about insert a cigarette paper between them. Their bassist and a third guitarist rock out either side, the latter often hunched over a small keyboard. It’s a miracle that everyone is right-handed, so no one gets brained by a stray tuning key.
The space nigh on vibrates with the unmet demand for tickets too. Wet Leg’s debut single went millions-of-streams viral last June; Iggy Pop now knows their name. Wet Leg’s set at July’s Latitude festival is now the stuff of near-myth, as the new band’s pup tent proved unequal to their big-dog numbers.
On paper, the duo have had just a pair of tracks out and support from 6 Music, but somehow a US tour in December is now sold out, likewise every UK date they have announced for 2022. A few hours before this headline show, they tweet wryly: “Big thank you to everyone that’s bought a ticket after having only heard two songs.”
But what two songs! Last June, Wet Leg’s bouncy, stream-of-nonsense tune Chaise Longue wormed its way into the indiesphere with its deadpan talk of day beds, degrees, buttered muffins, a line lifted from the 2004 film Mean Girls. In the midst of a British post-punk revival in which declamatory sing-talkers front bands full of wiry guitars, Wet Leg have added absurdist one-liners and a reckless commitment to fun. According to the band, they formed at the top of a ferris wheel, drunk, after a 2019 Idles festival set.
Chambers and Teasdale might have named themselves after a loss of bladder control – there is a wicked ick factor to a lot of their lyrics – but “wet leg” could equally describe the ejaculatory critical response to them.
One organ pronounced Chaise Longue one of the most exciting debut singles since Arctic Monkeys’ I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor. As kismet would have it, Wet Leg now find themselves on the same label as the Monkeys.
Happily, there were more ear worms where Chaise Longue came from: Wet Leg’s second single, Wet Dream, found lead singer Teasdale wringing humour from an ex’s sexual fantasy. Its oh-so-catchy chorus and disco handclaps prove irresistible tonight.
If Wet Leg’s signature move is a kind of sarcastic innuendo (“I’ve got Buffalo 66 on DVD” is one of Teasdale’s come hithers), they perform it while looking thoroughly wholesome. The band’s videos featured the pair dressed as folksy “cottage-core” milkmaids – homespun frauleins who nonetheless sometimes sport lobster claws. They might look like First Aid Kit, but live Wet Leg’s sound recalls bands such as Elastica and the Breeders or a slew of more recent acts Wet Leg have talked up in interviews, Australian punks the Chats, for one.
Tonight, no one is actually wearing a wimple, although the guitarist has a chintzy curtain tassel dangling from his guitar neck. And although it is still very early days – an album is mooted for some time next year – the band Wet Leg probably most resemble tonight is Pavement, a mainstay of the Domino label in the 90s. It’s in the offhand way Teasdale delivers non-sequiturs and the stop-start pacing and fuzzy crescendos of their songs.
Some songs punch out from the default indie rock of this short set. I Don’t Want to Go Out drips with trademark Teasdale snark, accessorised here and there by a spacey, theremin-like keyboard line. A song called Supermarket confirms their skewwhiff indie-rock orientation. Later, Teasdale sings about checking her phone on another off-kilter track that has an unexpectedly heavy, near-psychedelic payoff.
In between are songs that depart from the template in their quietude or straightforwardness. In interviews, Wet Leg have alluded to previous outfitsthat didn’t bear fruit. Some basic internet research reveals Teasdale’s very respectable past as a piano-playing folk singer, Rhain, in the mould of Joanna Newsom – a far cry from the arch, cod-Amish badass she has become.
The “fun” plan seems to be working, though. “We’re going to play the last song now,” says Teasdale pointedly. And the band blast through a joyous rendition of Chaise Longue, the two friends yelling the lyrics at each other, grinning all the while.
