Is ’11:21′ a peek into Wet Leg’s pre-fame beginnings?
As much as people may want to wish ill will upon them, finding all sorts of excuses to deride their rise to fame, Wet Leg have done more than enough to deserve the clout they’ve received in the last four years.
First things first, they’re not industry plants, and the entire notion that they are is a ludicrous one rooted in misogyny. God forbid two women become instantly successful following the release of a song that was bound to turn heads and was built for the very success it earned.
An industry plant doesn’t take long to get sniffed out because they’re usually not worthy of being there. The fact that Wet Leg have now proven that their debut album was no fluke by following it up with Moisturizer goes to show that they’re more than deserving of where they’ve landed, and that they’re now due to go on another journey to greater things.
If there’s anything else that needs to be highlighted, it’s the fact that they were teenagers on the Isle of Wight. The island isn’t exactly a place famed for its ties to the music industry unless you’re specifically talking about Level 42 or The Bees, and true to form, their humble beginnings in Newport would suggest they were struggling just as much as any other regular artist trying to hit the big time.
Even moves to different parts of the country with better infrastructure couldn’t propel them into the spotlight, and it took them forming a band on a whim, after years of rejection had continually set them back. But what exactly were the respective projects of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers like?
While Wet Leg stuck to one particular mission of delivering fun yet scrappy indie rock, Moisturizer sees the band approach songwriting in a variety of styles, and they seem comfortable in most of them, especially as heard on ‘11:21’. That’s because both of their previous projects bore a certain resemblance to this particular cut, and their return to their roots on the penultimate song from their latest record is indicative of the fact that they haven’t forgotten all about where their journeys began.
Despite having initially met studying music in college on the Isle, the duo didn’t form Wet Leg until 2019, and Teasdale’s solo project, RHAIN, was one that took on a more relaxed approach to indie pop. The venom that’s present in Wet Leg’s music isn’t delivered in her own work. While the release of her sole EP, Oscar November Echo, managed to catch some attention from the British music press, she was ultimately chewed up and spat out like many other aspiring acts of the same ilk.
Guitarist Hester Chambers remained on her island home, making music, while Teasdale was living in Bristol, but similarly, her various projects had the same relaxed nature about them. Alongside future Wet Leg member Josh Mobaraki, Chambers fronted a little-known duo called Sleep Well, while also collaborating with a group known as Red Squirrel, and seemingly providing vocals for another project called Tuesday Maybe Wednesday.
When you consider where it all began for the founders, who worked hard in several unsuccessful ventures for the best part of a decade, the fact that they’d all but given up when they reunited at the end of the 2010s says a lot about how a slightly changed perspective can alter the direction of everything.
While performing lilting indie folk ballads didn’t bring them a huge amount of notoriety, it’s completely understandable why they’d want to earnestly revisit, on a low-stakes album, a track like ‘11:21’, bringing their journey full circle as they embark on further global domination.
