This is the third and final part of the series of posts on Wet Leg, the band that is about to take over the world. Check out the first two parts: She Loathes You Yeah,Yeah, Yeah and The Wet Boyfriend.
Other than bad
boyfriends, another major concern of Wet Leg seems to be bad parties. Now,
having come of age in the disco era, I am no stranger to party songs. But where
the average disco artist looked on the party as A GOOD THING ™, Rhian and
Hester have the average millennial’s ho-hum attitude to parties and having a
good time. In other words, NOT A GOOD THING ™. This is not surprising. We grew
up in innocent, optimistic times when everything seemed possible if you pulled
your socks up, spat on your hands, and got down to it. Now, with plastic seas
and methane skies and AI Armageddon staring us in the face, it is difficult to
imagine any of this turning out well, no matter how much we spit on the hand or
how high we pull up the socks. In times like these, boogying the night away
does not seem appropriate.
In the Wet
Leg songs, the party seems to be a metaphor for life. The word “party” is
strictly used in just a handful of songs. The rest of what I am calling the
party songs are really about what a bad idea life in general is, and wouldn’t we
all be much better off if we jumped off the nearest cliff.
Of course,
in the usual Wet Leg fashion, the point is made with a good deal of humor and
loads of peppy music. If you could shut your ears to the lyrics; if for
example, Rhian sang these songs in a hoarse, unintelligible growl like Kurt
Cobain, they could almost pass off danceable party numbers. But with Rhian’s
clear, crystal annunciation, the lyrics are hard to ignore, as is their
message.
On with the
song analysis.
Angelica
I’ve said
this before. This is my favorite Wet Leg song. It has everything: great
concept, great jokes, great writing, super tunes (not one, but four) … and a
gloomy message that makes you want to get into bed, cover your head with a
blanket, and never come out. What more could one possibly want?
Rhian said in an interview that Angelica is a dear friend of hers, the one whom she used to stay over with when she was gigging solo in London (or was it Bristol? Sorry, can’t locate the interview to verify.). The song is about Angelica gatecrashing into a lousy party that bores her to tears (based on a true anecdote, one presumes), and then proceeding to solve matters by popping off everyone at the party with a ray gun (not based on a true anecdote, one presumes).
Check out
the full lyrics. Unlike most song lyrics, it’s actually a fun read.
My favorite
verse in the song:
I don't know what I'm even doing here
I was told that there would be free beer
But that is
only because it speaks to me as a beer worshipper. The girls too have stated in
interviews that they are huge beer fans. How could they possibly be more
perfect?
The overall
message is one of disillusionment, a fed-upness with superficiality and the
have-a-good-time-if-it-chokes-you attitude. The song has four great tunes jostling
for supremacy, following the ABCD-ABCD-A/D structure of the other Wet Leg songs
that I discussed in the previous post. The nagging, insistent opening riff is
the signature of the song. But the riff that draws the most attention is the ‘good
times, all the times’ boom-boom-boom marching tune. It sounds like a detachment
of Wehrmacht Stormtroopers goose-stepping off to have an evening of fun and
games, their Oberstleutnants Befehl ringing in their ears: ‘You will haff a good
time, ja?’ Rhian and Hester chant these words in unison with flat
expressionless faces, while the bass and drums thunder in the background.
Oh No
This is a
rare low-key song in the Wet Leg set. It doesn’t have any standout riffs, but
it is based on a whimsical Roald Dahlesque concept: the protagonist gets so
overwhelmed by the stream of messages on her mobile phone that she actually
gets consumed by it.
I went home
All alone
I checked my phone
And now I'm inside it
There are
plenty of other references to the mindlessness of the social media driven
lifestyle and lots of neat lines.
Then there is this nice bit about a party, which is what made me lump the song into the party section.
If you're going to the party
I heard there's gonna be some arty
People talking 'bout themselves
Or whatever it is that you always talk about, ah
The nicest
part of this song is actually the video. Rhian and Hester goof around in big,
flapping shaggy bear costumes on a waterfront pier on the Isle of Wight. They
are natural clowns. They can create visual humor out of virtually nothing. Do
watch the video right up to the last frame. The ending credits are a scream.
Like the Monty Python sketches, even the credits are droll.
Too Late Now
With this
song, the girls push their four-in-one concept to the limit. It not only has
four completely different tunes, with their own tempos, riffs, and vocal
delivery, but even the contents are different. It is four sub-songs jostling
for space in one song. It is the Wet Leg brand of audacity carried to an
extreme. They do it, because they know they can get away with it. If you wish
to intellectualize about it, you can think of it as a songwriter’s
steam-of-consciousness. The protagonist is trying to write a song, but her
thoughts keep skipping from idea to idea.
It starts off as a melancholy lament about lost love. Abruptly, the songwriter decides this is not at all what she wants to write about. She starts having bleak thoughts about her unsatisfying life and decides to sound off about the way the social media is manipulating her head. Then she drops back into melancholy and has thoughts of ending it all with her lover by driving her car into the sea. Only, in the usual Wet Leg fashion, this suicide note is sung to a cheerful, swaying, bouncing tune that stands in stark contrast to the bleakness of the words.
This song
has some rather saucy lines, some of them being my favorite Wet Leg lines.
I don't need no dating app
To tell me if I look like crap
To tell me if I'm thin or fat
To tell me should I shave my rat
And
I'm gonna drive my car into the sea
I'm gonna drive downtown while looking pretty
ordinary
The below
line is pretty funny too, but they have used variations of it in a couple of other
songs, so it detracts from the punch.
I just
need a bubble bath
To set me on a higher path
On the
other hand, the reuse of conceits like the above between songs just might be
intentional. It creates recurrent motifs that bind all the songs on the album
into a whole.
Check out the official video. It's hugely funny too, including the credits at the end.
The Wet Concerts
That’s
enough of the song analysis. I leave you to discover the other Wet Leg songs
for yourselves. In any case, the way to get the full Wet Leg effect is not to
view individual song videos, but to watch an entire concert from start to
finish. Rhian and Hester’s goofy dances between songs, their chatting with the
audience, the way the songs flow from one into the other… it is a delightful
experience. And by the way, each concert is just that little bit different. I
must have watched hundreds of their concerts without ever being bored or feeling
that it was repetitive. Heck, I have watched some of their best concerts
multiple times, discovering something new each time.
Actually,
they say that the *real* Wet Leg experience is to see them live, in person. The
YouTube videos don’t even begin to capture the electricity in the air at their
concerts, report actual concert goers. I can well believe it. Unfortunately, I
have not yet been able to experience it for myself. Wet Leg haven’t performed
anywhere reasonably close to me in the past year and a half. Hopefully, I’ll be
able to catch them live one of these days…
@Wet Leg:
PLEEEEZE DO A CONCERT NEAR LYON….
PLEEEEZE PRETTY PLEEZEEEE…
Anyhow,
until then, there are plenty of concerts on YouTube for people like you and me.
For your
convenience, I have shortlisted their best concert videos on YouTube. Not
necessarily their best performances, you understand, just the best ones in
terms of video and sound quality.
The Rockpalast concert in Köln
This is
undoubtedly their best concert on video, one of their tightest performances on
record with excellent audio and camerawork. Actually, if you want to see the
best concert of any of your favorite groups, check out if they have done a
Rockpalast session. Those dudes at Rockpalast do some kind of magic. Not only
is their video and audio recording technique exceptional, full of German high
tech, but by some means they manage to get the artists to perform extra sharp
on that day. Possibly the artists, on being confronted by all that German
precision and efficiency, decide they had better up their game too. This, despite the fact that the German
audiences are probably the least demonstrative in the world. Or perhaps that
has something to do with it. An audience making less racket makes for better audio
recording, and the artists probably feel challenged to make that audience show
some life.
If you want to see the BEST versions of all the songs I have featured in this and previous posts, check out this video. The only reason I did not link this video previously was that I wanted to give samples from a variety of concerts.
SD Version, with annotations
HD Version , without annotations
The 3voor12 Radio Session
This is an
amazing live video. I have not heard another like it, for Wet Leg, or any other
act. I wouldn’t recommend it to a Wet Leg newbie. Since it was for a radio
session, there wasn’t a live audience, and Rhian and Hester don’t do any of
their funny dances or uncork those blazing smiles or anything. They are rather
wooden, actually. But the sound…. Oh me god! You can hear each instrument
individually. You can virtually hear the strings on the bass guitar being
plucked. You can hear the drumstick scraping on the high hat. You can make out
exactly how each Wet Leg song is layered and arranged. Zero compression, zero
post-processing (OK, probably not strictly true, but you know what I mean). You have to listen to the video with high quality headphones, preferably on a high def smart TV though, to get all this stuff I am talking about. Otherwise you'll think I'm talking through my high hat. It's a total waste to see this video on the computer or worse, a smartphone.
THIS is the
video to watch if you want to see what drummer Henry Holmes brings to the table.
His contribution is mostly lost in the general din of the other concert videos,
but here you can see him driving the band with a steady beat. The way he copes
with multiple, quicksilver changes in rhythm and tempo in the complex four-part
structure of the Wet Leg songs. The way he puts in clever little fills that
accentuate and stress the lyrics at just the right moments, without
overwhelming them. I keep comparing Wet Leg to the young Beatles, and Henry is
very much a drummer in the Ringo Starr mold: clever but not flashy, rock solid
but not a technical showman, dedicated to making the overall song as good as it
possibly can be. In short: egoless drumming.
The Route Du Rock Concert
at Malo
The
highlight of this video is Rhian attempting to do her usual banter with the
audience in French. The band is clearly having a great time and it shows. Not
one of their sharpest concerts. Unlike the Rockpalast concert, for example, they
goof up multiple times, but they laugh, and they carry on. But that is exactly what
makes this concert so good. This is the essence of Wet Leg….
Isle of Wight Festival 2022
Possibly the cutest Wet Leg concert on YouTube. Here they perform before a home audience, the first time after their worldwide breakthrough. Rhian's mom is in the audience, and the guy taking the video is standing right next to her, and keeps showing how she reacts to the songs. Rhian and Hester look sheepish, with all their families watching them. Rhian keeps giving funny messages to her mom. She looks downright embarrassed singing Piece of Shit with all the foul language, knowing her mom is watching. Is Mike somewhere in the audience too? Now that's a thought.
Live on KEXP
A delightful concert, which includes a delightful and insightful interview. The circuit breaker blows up in the middle of the concert, which adds to the fun. The girls are in great form. The only downside is that they seem to have been instructed by KEXP to bleep over all the rude words to avoid offending the radio audience. Sad.
