Pilgrimage to Madrid

Last week I made the pilgrimage to Madrid to see the Goddess. The one they call Shakira.

I am a recent convert. I had been hearing about Shakira since the 90’s, of course. But I always wrote her off as another of those dancing stars who sing a bit. I’m more of a Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zep kind of guy – the standard Baby Boomer. Then, sometime early last year, the French arts channel Arte put the entire Oral Fixation Tour video on replay. There was nothing better on TV, so I watched it. From end to end. I was blown off my feet. I was mesmerized, transfixed, discombobulated. This was not another dancing star. This was one of the greats. An artiste who rubbed shoulders with The Beatles and Elvis and Bob Dylan. Her lyrics vied with Lennon and Dylan. Her voice was operatic. She could play a dozen instruments. She could be hard rock, Latin, chanson française, pop, blues, standards. And the dancing – oh my dear God… she was music made flesh. She made words, music and dance into an indivisible whole. A goddess in human form.

I was filled with shame, and chagrin. So many years wasted that I could have been listening to her music. I had to make up for lost time. I immediately ran out and bought all her albums and DVDs. I listened to them endlessly. I started learning Spanish to understand her songs. I watched all her videos on YouTube. I read all about her. I watched all of her interviews. I realized she was not only a great artist, but a wonderful human being who had come up the hard way, and was doing so much for impoverished children all over the world. An inspiration. As intelligent and deep as she was beautiful. I watched one song from the Oral Fixation Tour video every night, before going to bed. It made my dreams sweet.

And I longed to see her in person.

Luckily, Shakira had recently dumped her moron of a husband and used the pain, like any true artist, to come come up with a brilliant new album. Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. And she announced a world tour to promote it, the Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour.

I waited and waited for the LMYNL Tour to come to Paris, but it stayed firmly in the Americas. At last, the Madrid Residency was announced, and I jumped at it. Madrid is slightly more complicated to get to than Paris, from chez moi in Lyon, but it is more doable than US or Mexico. Tickets were surprisingly easy to get, with so many dates to choose from. I grabbed the October 9 date. I took the front row standing tickets. They were reasonably priced at 183 Euros.

My wife Blandine is not a Shakira fan. She is resolutely French, and refuses to listen to any music not produced by a compatriot. Florent Pagny and Patrick Bruel are her thing. But I nagged, cajoled and wheedled her into making it into a five day vacation in Madrid. I have a horror of traveling alone.

Air tickets booked, hotels reserved, days counted, one by one.

At last, there I was. On the way to the concert on the Metro Line 3 to Villaverde to the Iberdrola Music grounds, where Shakira had built for herself her own stadium – Estadio Shakira – and a small arts village to go with it. I was all alone. Blandine preferred to explore Madrid.

My first view of Iberdrola Music grounds:

My first view of Estadio Shakira:

A long wait in the sun, with a slightly bossy security guard bullying everyone into making straight lines. The lines kept going out of shape. Hey, this isn’t Germany! The cerveza in the plastic Shakira cups helped, served by kindly life savers toting big, sploshing beer fountain backpacks. (Learn this phrase: “Una cerveza, por favor”. It may save your life some day, if you happen to be in Spain).

The gates opened. A mad rush to enter. To hell with the straight lines. 

With a bit of luck and quick thinking – I ran in an outer loop instead of joining the main bunch heading for the center - I ended up at the perfect position: the corner of the main stage and ramp. And I was almost at the crash barrier. Just two people ahead of me.

This was my position:

Another long wait in the sun, packed like a sardine. I was surrounded by a platoon of plump dames from Nicaragua. They didn't much like standing in the heat. They sat down. They scrunched down on the false grass, by kind of slithering down vertically in the crush. One of them used my foot as a cushion. My legs froze. Blood circulation stopped. Her friend decided she had enough staring into a sea of smelly legs. She tried to get up. It was impossible. Two frail girls tried to pull her up. They couldn’t. I stepped in. I grabbed her biceps and yanked her up. She slapped me jovially on the back and said something complementary in Spanish. Something like “This was a man’s work”. There is nothing that breaks the ice like grabbing a woman by the biceps and yanking her up. She wrapped a meaty arm around my shoulder and told me all about herself. She was from Nicaragua but was now settled in the South of Spain, in Málaga.

The screen started showing pictures Shakira in sexy clothing posing with what seemed like plastic bottles of cosmetics. Were these ads? Our goddess doing ads? I was dismayed. Oh well, I’m sure she uses the funds to set up schools for poor children, so I guess it’s OK, I said to myself. Later I found out that these were ads for Shakira’s own Isima line of haircare products. Not finding anything on the market suitable for Latino hair, she invented her own products. And yes, she uses them herself. She covers her hair in this stuff in the morning during rehearsals, and washes it off just before the concert, so that her hair is that nice, fluffy, wavy thing that we all admire.

Then the screen started showing old Shakira music videos, starting from her very first one, when she was still a scowling, dark-haired, guitar-slinging rock babe with an attitude, progressing slowly to her gracious blonde goddess phase. A big relief. It took one’s mind off from the heat and the crush and the bladder that was giving off disturbing signals.

The hour of the concert arrived. And went. But the videos went on. The relief quickly grew into panic. Were they gonna announce that Shakira had a tummy ache and couldn’t perform, and now that we’d watched her videos, we could all go home? After all, she had canceled shows before on the LMYNL tour. As each video ended, the crowd cheered, but then another one started, and the crowd sighed, but sang along loyally.

At last, the screen went dark. The crowd cheered, this time with more confidence.

And then our goddess was in our midst.

I must have seen her in over a thousand videos, but seeing her there, in flesh, right in front of me, was a magical moment.

She did all her stuff. Having already seen countless videos of the LMNYL tour, there were no real surprises. The same songs, the dance moves, the same gestures, the same funny expressions at the right places. But at the same time, it was different. Seeing the same smile and gesture in person was light years away from seeing it on screen. It was somehow more real, more authentic, more human. Every move that she made was blown up a hundred fold on the giant screen behind her. But it wasn’t the same. I kept my eyes firmly on the tiny figure in front of me.

And then it was over.

I was too busy burning every moment of the concert into my memory to take pictures and videos, but I did take a few. After all, memories fade. I needed something to relive these moments, a month, a year, several years down the line.

Here are some of those photos and videos…

As I said, it is nothing like being there in person. You’ll have to go to one of her concerts yourself, if you haven’t already. I understand she has lined up a huge concert in Egypt, right in front of the Pyramids. That should be something. I wish I could see that.

The Videos:

Wet Leg 1.0 is back!!!! (and the Lyon concert)

The Green Man Concert

Wet Leg just did the most amazing, fantabulous concert at Green Man a week ago!! Probably their best concert yet with the material from their new album, Moisturizer. Check it out.

And Glory Be, its back to the good old days of Wet Leg 1.0. Rhian smiles, not once, not twice, BUT RIGHT THROUGH THE CONCERT!!!! Even while singing, like in the good old days (all those years ago in 2023). Even Hester smiles and speaks to the audience. No more Scowls and Rock Diva acts. Just the two sweet, funny, good-natured girls whom we all fell in love with in 2023.

Is this a one-off? Maybe because they were in a very small auditorium with a small crowd? It is difficult to pull off the Rock Diva act in front of a small audience. Anyway, let us hope it stays this way...

The Lyon Concert

By contrast, just last month in October, I attended the Wet Leg concert in Lyon. It was Wet Leg 2.0 on steroids. They were on a rampage. It was mind-blowing. The sound and light thundered and roared over the audience like a Tsunami. Rhian was lithe and deadly like a dervish of death. Holmes drummed like a maniac. The bass thudded. The heart thudded in tune. The pulse raced. It took me two days to recover from it, no kidding. I was in the front row, right in the middle, right in front of Rhian. I got the effect full in the face.

Here is the closing song, Mangetout. This video does not capture even 1% of what it was like to be there, but hopefully you will get some idea:

My mind was *literally* blown at the end of it. I had to wait for other people to move away to pick up my scattered neurons off the floor. Yes, it was an awe-inspiring performance. But honestly, given a choice, I would still have preferred to be at the homely, low key Green Man concert. Although we are all slowly getting used to the new angry, hard-rocking avatar of Wet Leg (or Wet Leg 2.0, as I like to call it), I think we all yearn for charming, funny, laid-back Wet Leg of the post-COVID times, that came like sunshine into that bleak period and made all the horrors go away.

Anyway, coming back to the Lyon concert, here are a couple of other videos I made. Most of the time, my phone was firmly in my pocket, as I burned every moment into my retina. All said and done, the new avatar of Wet Leg is just as compelling as the old one, in its own way.

This is where they entered the stage and played Catch Theses Fist, up to the first stanza. After that, I switched off the camera to better enjoy the concert. Sorry, dudes.

This is a souped-up, hard-rock version of Chaise Longue they played somewhere in the middle. Nothing like the old version!

In this video, in the middle of the concert, Rhian chats with the audience and then they play a roughed-up punk version of Supermarket. All of the old songs they played in this gig got the same kick in the fanny!

This is Davina McCall. Very slow and dreamy for a change.

I started off filming this video in Landscape, and halfway through changed my mind and moved to Portrait. SORRY DUDES 😒 Just turn your phones around, OK? Or if watching on the PC, bend your neck sideways. 😂

Here is the set list. This is the one Rhian was using. The guitar symbol marks the songs where Rhian plays the guitar, along with the chord sequence. I guess she is still a bit uncomfortable with the guitar (she is by training a pianist).

Couple of stills:

Here is Hester singing her song (Don't Speak)

Check out my other Wet Leg posts (there are now 7):

https://pen-slinger.blogspot.com/search/label/Wet%20Leg

Wet Leg - Festival de Beauregard

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: 

1. Catch these fists
2. Being in Love
3. Wet Dream
4. Supermarket
5. Angelica
6. Pillow Talk
7. Oh No
8. Ur Mum
9. Chaise Longue
10. 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.

Wet Leg V2.0

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 21^st 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... (check out the Rio concert of 2023, where Rhian and Hester shock the audience with tearful goodbyes. Skip to 43:40 in the video, just after Angelica and before the closing song, Chaise Long)

....and they disappeared from public view. They bobbed up only to collect another Grammy in 2024 ...this time for a remix of Depeche Mode’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? We posted message after message on their Instagram and Facebook accounts, without a response. This went on almost two years.

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:

 

 Here is a complete recent concert, in Porto:

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:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/apr/04/this-weird-dream-just-keeps-going-wet-leg-on-overnight-success-sexual-epiphanies-and-facing-fears

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 infectious smiles, their 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 take a step back. 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 moments, at La Route du Rock, Saint-Malo 2022. They never looked prettier, they were never funnier, and their sound was never so exciting, as on this glorious summer day in France:

But I guess they couldn't go on being like that forever. That was a particular point in time, at a very early stage in their fame. A time of innocence. They've moved on, and we fans had better move with them, instead of pining for what was.

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….

The Wet Posts

 

Check out my posts on the most exciting band in the world, currently .

Wet Leg Mania-3: The Wet Party

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.