At last! I finally got to see Wet Leg LIVE!! After three years of obsessing about them, playing their debut album over and over, and watching them nearly every day on You Tube, I got the full, true Wet Leg Experience.
Last week, they played at the Festival de Beauregard, not far from where we were having our annual beach holiday on the Normandy coast (check out my last post ). Naturally I hopped on the bus and went to see them.
The Festival the Beauregard happens on the outskirt of the city of Caen, on the grounds of Chateau de Beauregard. Here is a shot of the main stage with the château on the side:
Naturally I went in early and made sure I was right on the front row, in the corner between the main stage and the walkway, where the lead singer can prance about. A couple of not-so-bad performances by Servo and King Hannah.
Then there was a performances by Jyeuhair on the second stage, which I decided to skip in order to safeguard my position at the main stage. A lot of people were waiting for the performance by Fontaines DC right after Wet Leg, and leaving my position would have been fatal. Anyway, as far as I could make out, Jyeuhair is some kind of rap act, and that doesn't interest me one bit.
After Jyeuhait there was a performance by a new French group called The Limiñanas on the main stage, which wasn't bad at all...
But they had done just one song, when disaster struck. It had been raining the night before, and the canvas roofing of the stage had turned into a kind of pond. A brisk wind, and the whole thing poured down, drenching the artists, the instruments, and us poor slobs in the front row:
The Limiñanas show was abandoned, and the stage hands got busy mopping up the stage and equipment. The Wet Leg show was brought forward. At Last, I would get to see Rhian and Hester and the gang!! My heart beat faster.
And then, there the were!!!!
It was so painful to see them, after having waited so long, I cried. I swear I cried.
I was torn between wanting to record the performance on my mobile for future recollection, and being in the moment and enjoying it with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul. The heart won. It was impossible to tear my eyes off Rhian to flick the camera app. The best I could manage were these two 15-second shots, the only two times in the entire one hour show that the music slowed down.
Here is the first one, the opening stanza of Too Late Now, which, as you know, start with a slow, sentimental lament, before it booms into hard drive. The moment it boomed, off went the camera!
Here is the second one, where Rhian is singing one of their new songs, which is unusually slow (I believe it is Pillow Talk). Here she is, strutting about on the walkway. As I mentioned above, I was in the corner of the walkway and the stage, getting the best of both!
Luckily for me, a couple of other dudes have posted complete songs from this performance on YouTube. Here they are:
And then it was over....
I can't remember all the songs they played. It went by in a magical blur. But I guess it was the more or less the same set they are playing at all the festivals now:
- Catch these fists
- Being in Love
- Wet Dream
- Supermarket
- Angelica
- Pillow Talk
- Oh No
- Ur Mum
- Chaise Longue
- CPR
Was it all I had imagined? It was more. It was WAY, WAY more.
I have been hearing for the past three years that seeing Wet Leg live is an unforgettable experience, and I realized for myself the truth of it. I must have seen over two hundred of their concert performances on YouTube, many of them several times, especially when I was working on my blog post, Wet Leg, The Early Years
But nothing could have prepared me for the physical experience of standing a few feet from them while they made music.
For one, Rhian has a charisma and physical presence that simply cannot be captured on camera. She is magnetic. It is impossible to take your eyes off her. Second, the raw sound they produce live can't be recorded adequately. It makes the pulses pound like any heavy metal act, but at the same time it has this beguiling, sensitive, ever-changing quality that very few modern bands can match, certainly not heavy metal acts. Maybe Led Zep were like that at their peak. I don't know. I was a little kid at the time.
What about Rhian's infamous "new look"? I complained about it in my last Wet Leg post. Rhian and Hester became famous for the dowdy, rustic flowing robes, cheeky grins, clowning about on stage - a stark contrast to the exciting music they played. It made them seem so charming and whimsical, so REAL.
Now all that has changed, as I mentioned in my last post. Rhian has gone full punk rocker: sexy clothes, scowls, aggressive attitude, acrobatic moves on stage. Hester, meanwhile, having an anxiety attack, has retreated into the background, leaving Rhian the sole frontwoman. Wet Leg fans were aghast, me included.
But... here is the thing... IT WORKS! By GOLLY it works! See Wet Leg live, and you realize it is PERFECT! It goes perfectly with their new music. For some reason it looks a bit disconcerting in photos and videos, but seen in person, from the front row of the stage, Rhian's new persona is madly exciting.
And just in case you still miss the old, cutesy Rhian, she's there too. She puts in an appearance between songs, when Rhian smiles and shyly asks the audience if they liked the song. That is actually the most fascinating aspect of the live performance: seeing Rhian transform back and forth between Girl-Next-Door and Rock-Goddess, not once, but several times in the course of the evening.
So you can rest assured, our Rhian hasn't changed, she's still the same good-natured, humorous person we knew. This new attitude is just a carefully constructed persona that she invokes for the duration of the song.
And as for Hester, she seems to be getting her confidence back. When I saw them, Hester faced the audience for most of the concert, and even smiled a couple of times. She did not play with her back turned to the stage, as she did in the first few outings after their big break.
Anyhow, the concert was over as abruptly as it had started, and I staggered off to get a beer and pee, something that I had been holding in the past hours. The toilet and lager seemed more attractive than Fontaines DC, at that point.
I did stick around to watch the performances that followed - after all, it was included in the price of the entry ticket: Amyl and The Sniffers, Fontaines DC, Clara Luciani, Martin Garrix.
But it was all a blur.
I could only think about Rhian and Hester and relive their show again and again in my head.
Here is a pic of the French singer Clara Luciani, whom all the French kids seem to be gaga about. She wasn't so bad.
