What’s next for Wet Leg: What can we expect from the indie darlings’ second chapter?
Wet Leg seemed a little faded for a moment there. However, their latest comeback, signalled by the emphatic social media caption, “We’re so back”, points to something different—something almost escapist and wholly nostalgic. Following the link to their official website, you enter a fantastical realm where finding everything you’d ever hoped for is merely a click away.
As far as pushing the idle observer into subscribed convert goes, it’s a pretty effective game. On the new site, an old, early-2000s typeface pops up with inexplicably enticing language, the ideal sort of welcome in a world as broken and fractured as it is now. “You’ve wandered far,” it reads, “But you are home now. Enroll now. Learn how to live forever.”
It’s an immortality play, that’s for sure, especially with another part jesting about joining a world where “the skin never cracks” and “the body never withers”. But what’s particularly interesting is that this gentle, albeit confident, push to subscribe to the next chapter of Wet Leg feels creatively refined and entirely authentic—even if it promises a place where time and ageing don’t exist. This is no meek return but rather a well-considered grandstand.
Authenticity, to Wet Leg, has always been a simple game, especially when it comes to occupying space in today’s convoluted landscape. As Rhian Teasdale told NME in 2022: “I think there’s more authenticity if you’re having fun. Sometimes, it can be quite contrived, and people think they have to be a certain way as a musician.” For Teasdale and Hester Chambers, that’s the crux of it: stumbling through life, laughing at the thorns.
Their debut exercised an undeniable air of this, so much so that it earned controversy, with people even accusing them of being nothing more than another empty ‘industry plant’. However, this was neither here nor there, at least not in terms of their broader success, with backlash only becoming mere background noise in the context of the ravenous audience appetite for the new indie darlings. Wet Leg weren’t for everybody, but what they did offer seemed highly contagious in today’s political playground: energy.
They offered escape, too. The Wet Leg sweet spot centres around not taking yourself too seriously, even if it pisses off the naysayers who brand it something along the lines of ‘music for people who hate music’. A rough deduction, but one that fell from the lips of the unamused who mistook their wit for a glaring lack of depth. But, again, it’s all about not caring about these misguided interpretations, especially when there’s so much fun to be had along the way.
But what’s next for Wet Leg?
After an ambiguous “break”, Wet Leg’s return marks a newfound awareness of their off-kilter place in the game. This new vision, or aesthetic, with the sort of Charli XCX-leaning Y2K aura, points to a specific type of edge, the kind that’s playful, if slightly mysterious, like hearing a group of younger teenagers discuss something entirely alien in public. Once, you were in on the joke. Wet Leg offers an opportunity to join it once again.
Moreover, all of this doesn’t just offer the same flavour of escape that’s always been there; it also conjures up sprinklings of specific moments in time, like falling down a rabbit hole of poorly digitised chatroom games as a kid, talking to strangers on the internet with a hazy blend of innocence and eeriness, where the whole world felt entirely limitless. Or, as Wet Leg see it, ageless. Timeless.
However, following this ominous site drop was a video on social media teasing their new material, which, to many, might seem somewhat anticlimactic. After all, with all these irresistible marketing temptations promising something grander, more creative than their first stint, the snippet sounds more like the same. Angular guitars, unsyncopated beats, and half-sung lyrics once again abound.
Against the backdrop of internet nostalgia, how does the music match up? It doesn’t. At least, not yet. Although, perhaps that’s not a bad thing, as we’ve witnessed Wet Leg amass mainstream appeal from sound alone, with accompanying publicity falling by the wayside. The point is: was this Wet Leg all along, just enhanced? Or is this a typical case of marketing efforts hyping up something that’s nothing more than Wet Leg 2.0?
As a cynic, conclusions might point towards the latter. However, for fans, this is barely news, especially as Wet Leg have never tried to mislead when it comes to artistic intent, their self-awareness fuelling their desire to be exactly who they want to be—or continue to be—are highly sought-after artists who don’t need to pander to fit in. Because they already do.
After all, these few seconds of new material seem to gravitate towards the kinds of sounds on the debut that gave a taste of Wet Leg without restriction, mirroring previous songs like ‘Angelica’, within which there exist drippings of something less easily describable. The Faux Real and Charli XCX remixes now just seem like sweet excursions while they readied themselves. It’s as if they already knew how much their sound fit comfortably into the cultural zeitgeist beyond the basic appeal of their music alone.
In other words, they bred a different kind of credibility, one rooted in a broader understanding of what audiences deem “good”. Much like Fontaines DC before them, the radical new aesthetic is not quite a red herring but certainly a noble act of peacocking liberation that says, ‘Come what may, we won’t be dull’.
Therefore, coming up for Wet Leg isn’t just a continued ride of the wave of their breakout success; it’s about maintaining power—and rightly so. After struggling to find success for years before Wet Leg, why wouldn’t they push on in the same vein after their unending touring jaunt around the world? It’s just nice to see they’ve expanded on it in many ways.
We might stumble upon Wet Leg’s new fantasy land, whether as fans or accidental observers, drawn in by the familiar aesthetic of something that once comforted us. We might even be converted to their game, their world, even if the music doesn’t perfectly fit the “aesthetic”.
But at the crux of it all is the main message and the core of their next step: absurdity is key, and so long as they embrace it, they’ll remain festival-billing keynotes.
