Sorry, no Diagonal Days cartoon strip this weekend. I am travelling and haven’t brought along my drawing tablet.
Instead, I thought I would do a blog post on the biggest,
baddest news item of 2025. In an era when not one, but THREE nuclear wars may
break out at any time at three different points on the globe, the climate is
going down the chute, and grumpy old men have taken over this planet, there is
one little piece of info we can all smile about: WET LEG ARE BACK!!!!
You are underwhelmed. Who, or what, is Wet Leg, you ask? If
they are back, it presupposes they went away. Did they?
Let me take your questions one by one:
What is Wet Leg?
Wet Leg is simply the greatest rock band since Nirvana. The
first rock band the 21st Century has thrown up, that can go
chin-to-chin with the iconic bands of the 60s and 70s. Check out my series of posts on Wet Leg
Did they go away?
Yes, sadly. Shortly after their 2023 Grammy for a
pathbreaking first album...
... they did a concert in Rio where they made a mysterious announcement about it being their last concert for a while, and they disappeared from public view. They bobbed up only to collect another Grammy in 2024 ...this time for a remix of Depeche Modes’s Wagging Tongue ...
... and a few odd concerts in UK that were pre-scheduled, but
other than that, they maintained complete radio silence. No Instagram,
Facebook, Twitter, TV interviews – nothing.
We fans were distraught. Have they broken up, we wailed? Has
something happened to them?
And then, glory be! Just as suddenly as they had
disappeared, they were back, with a bang! New songs, new album, new sound, new
look! In short: Wet leg V2.0!
Here they are, doing two of their new songs on 3VOOR12. The 3VOOR12
sound and camerawork outstanding, as always, as I have mentioned in previous Wet
Leg posts.
Here are the same two songs, Catch these Fists and CPR, on Jools Holland:
This is the artwork for their new album, which will be officially
released on July 11. They have been performing live only a handful of the new
songs until now. So, lots more new songs coming up soon!
Cover Art of Wet Leg’s new Album: Moisturizer – coming out JULY 11!!!
Here is a recent interview in Crack Magazine, where Rhian
talks about their big break from touring, and the new direction that they have
taken.
https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/wet-leg-cover-story-interview/
Another nice interview in The Guardian:
It seems the band had taken a beach house in Southwold,
Suffolk, and holed up there for six months, to work on their new album without
the distractions of constant touring. In the meantime, Rhian had found love
again (we fans are so happy for her). So, most of the songs on the album are supposedly
love songs, and not the bad-boyfriend songs that the first album was full of.
Although, if CPR is anything to go by, Rhian has her own unique take on
the love song!
Going by the few new songs that have been released to date,
their new sound is darker, more aggressive. Much of the flippant humor that made
their first album so endearing has gone. The clever wordplay and the zany
outlook on life is still intact, though.
About the new look, I’m not so sure. Rhian and Hester’s playful
goofing-about on stage and their adorable, girls-next-door look was such a
large part of the Wet Leg charm. Now Hester has taken to facing the back of the
stage throughout the concert and never appears in person for interview or faces
the camera. She had tried to overcome her social anxieties the first time
around, but has now decided to give in. It’s so sad. Maybe she’ll find the strength
to overcome her anxieties again. We’re with you, Hester!
Rhian has been working out and now appears on stage flexing
her muscles and scowling. She has bleached her eyebrows and taken to wearing aggressive
new costumes. I dunno. I guess this is her way of coping with unwanted
attention from the Romeos and Lotharios who no doubt used to badger her in the
past (which the song Catch These Fists seems to suggest), but one can’t
deny it’s somewhat jarring for us old fans. Oh well, I guess we’ll get used to
it, eventually. Actually, if you watch the concert footage carefully, you can
see the old Rhian slipping out from time to time. This new look seems to be
some kind of protective mask. Maybe she’ll go back to being the old Rhian we
used to adore one day.
If you have never
seen Wet Leg V1.0, here is one of their finest concerts:
Anyway, the good news for us Frenchies: Wet Leg are coming to France not once, but THRICE this year!!! I’ve got the tickets to their Caen and Lyon concerts, and I am counting the days….
