THE NEWYORKER, APRIL 11, 2022 67
the discombobulating stretch between
youth and middle age—from twenty-
five to forty, say. (Teasdale is twenty-
nine and Chambers is twenty-eight.)
In the video for “Too Late Now,” Teas-
dale and Chambers stumble around in
striped bathrobes with cucumber slices
over their eyes. A montage gathers some
of the more aesthetically unpleasant
elements of modern life: cranes, a cig-
arette butt, Botox, trash spilling from
an overstuffed dumpster, graffiti wish-
ing passersby a shit day, f luorescent
lights, a pigeon. “I’m not sure if this is
the kinda life that I saw myself living,”
Teasdale admits. A synthesizer rings
out like church bells. Though she never
sounds especially devastated, “Too Late
Now” is Teasdale’s most tender and re-
vealing vocal performance, and one of
the best and most dynamic songs on
“Wet Leg.” As children, we’re often
desperate to grow up, yet it turns out
that adulthood can be ugly and de-
pressing. “I just need a bubble bath to
set me on a higher path,” Teasdale in-
tones grimly. I always hear the line as
an adroit skewering of the self-care
industry and its goofy promises of tran-
scendence—no soak or steam or com-
bination of crystals can undo the real-
ities of tax season, garbage day, and
furniture assembly.
M
usically, Wet Leg makes prickly
but playful post-punk that often
sounds like a cross between the Pix-
ies, Pavement, and Garbage—all be-
loved stalwarts of the nineties indie-
rock scene—but the most obvious point
of comparison is Dry Cleaning, an-
other excellent new British band with
droll, absurdist lyrics. Both groups built
significant followings by putting out
weird, enticing singles far in advance
of their first albums. Wet Leg man-
aged to sell out most of a U.S. tour
after releasing just two tracks. (“Big
thank you to everyone that’s bought
a ticket after having only heard two
songs haha,” the band tweeted.) “Chaise
Longue,” Wet Leg’s first single, ap-
peared in June of 2021. Initially, it re-
minded me of the Breeders’ “Cannon-
ball,” an alt-rock hit from 1993, insofar
as it was a song I liked immediately
and ferociously, it was bizarre and funny,
it was centered on a rubbery guitar riff,
and both the lyrics and the delivery
(wan, vaguely sardonic, perfectly know-
ing) reiterated the idea that rock music
performed by women did not always
have to be concerned with heartbreak—
it could also be jokey, stylized, effort-
less. “Chaise Longue” opens, of course,
with a dick joke:
Mummy, Daddy, look at me
I went to school and I got a degree
All my friends call it the big D
I went to school and I got the big D.
Teasdale goes on to quote the film
“Mean Girls”—“Is your muffin but-
tered? Would you like us to assign
someone to butter your muffin?”—and
to gently entice a potential suitor back-
stage: “I’ve got a chaise longue in my
dressing room / And a pack of warm
beer that we can consume.” (Teasdale
is fond of purposefully terrible come-
ons, and on the single “Wet Dream”
she sings, “Baby, do you wanna come
home with me / I got ‘Buffalo ’66’ on
DVD.”) “Chaise Longue” was an in-
stant hit, in part because it showed two
women having the sort of fun—dumb,
resolutely laid-back—typically reserved
for young men, but mostly because its
barrelling melody and loud-quiet-loud
architecture made it so joyful to hol-
ler along to. The dream of Hot Vax
Summer was a ruse, and a cruel one,
but Teasdale and Chambers were of-
fering a kind of carefree intimacy. (It
sounds silly, but there’s a huge amount
of unexpected closeness in a moment
on “Chaise Longue” when Teasdale
says, “Excuse me?,” and Chambers an-
swers, “What?”)
Wet Leg encourages its listeners to
briefly pause their endless fretting and
remember what it feels like to be goofy
with your best friend for a few hours.
Despite the unending heaviness of
world events, there is still room for
inanity; delight doesn’t always need to
feel indulgent, and art doesn’t need to
be sombre or humorless. In the fall,
when Teasdale and Chambers were
asked about the band’s name—“What
does it mean to be a wet leg?” the d.j.
Jill Riley wondered—they couldn’t stop
giggling. “That’s a nice question,”
Chambers said. Teasdale added, “It
doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just
a reminder to not take yourself too se-
riously, because, at the end of the day,
you’re in a band called Wet Leg.”
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WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
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