Another debut, and rare album that (largely)
lives up to the hype, Wet Leg is a great indie pop-rock record full of
catchy tunes and playful, tongue-in-cheek lyrics. An exercise in both having
and eating one’s cake, Wet Leg make fun of hipster cool while embodying
it (a trick the Arctic Monkeys pulled off notably too, a good decade and
a half ago now). Musically, Wet Leg remind me a bit of The Breeders
or early Sleater-Kinney, albeit with a slightly softer edge. The glowing
reviews, repeated ‘sound of 2022’ labels and the general over-exposure had me
primed to dislike this record from the start, but when it came out I found I
enjoyed every track, and it has stayed in rotation well beyond my
expectations. The pre-release singles like ‘Chaise Longue’ and ‘Wet Dream’ –
for all their silliness – remain lodged in the head a number of months on. But
it’s the more ambitious tracks that elevate this above the pack: take the
dreamy ‘Loving You’ (I hear echoes of the wonderful Palehound here), or
the stomping ‘Oh No’. Quite what longevity this album will have for me, or what
Wet Leg can muster for album #2, who knows. They are, very deliberately,
throwaway in their message and presentation. In any event, as I write, this actually
has ended up being (a) sound of 2022.