Wet Leg, Brixton Academy, review: the British indie rock band return with swagger

Telegraph

24-05-2025

Wet Leg are back for the second leg of their thrillingly explosive career, no longer quite so wet about the ears and yet still conveying a sense of gleeful delight, as if they can't believe what they're getting away with.
The Isle of Wight duo of vocalist and guitarist Rhian Teasdale and lead guitarist Hester Chambers burst onto the British music scene with the comically surrealist, innuendo-laden single Chaise Longue in 2021, followed by a brashly amusing album of smart aleck, electro pop punk in 2022. There was something irresistibly fresh about their mocking swagger: two young women armed with electric guitars poking fun at men, dating, sexism and all the absurdities of pop culture. They scooped Grammy and Brit Awards and toured the world as support to reigning British pop idol Harry Styles, approaching everything thrown at them with a zesty sense of joy, as if giddily enthralled by their own success.
Along the way, the three-piece backing band of hairy men who filled out the duo's perky new wave with something dirtier and grungier have gelled into a formidably powerful rock unit. They have been rewarded with full band membership. For their second album, Moisturizer (due in July), Wet Leg are officially billed as a five-piece.
They all wore white at Brixton Academy, the beardy male musicians' baggy, shaggy appearance making it look as though they had been inducted into a cult. Chambers occupied a spot towards the back of the stage, intensely focussing on her angular guitar riffs and licks, almost shy of inviting attention.
But Teasdale showed no such reservation. She walked onto stage in a cropped tank-top and skirt, flexing her biceps as though she had just vanquished a boxing opponent, before launching into the band's latest single, Catch These Fists, a pugnacious put-down of aggressive male encroachment. 'I just threw up in my mouth / When he tried to ask me out,' she sang, with a hugely enthusiastic 5,000-strong crowd already roaring along with every word.
Since Wet Leg shot to the top of the UK indie rock class, some of their zeitgeisty zing has been supplanted by the arrival of The Last Dinner Party, a female art rock five-piece who are quite a bit more accomplished and musically ambitious. Wet Leg don't appear particularly bothered, which is somewhat their default setting. Nearly half of their set rather boldly comprised unreleased songs, with titles including Davina McCall, Mangetout, Liquidize and CPR. These were greeted every bit as enthusiastically as established favourites.
On such limited evidence, the new album may be more punkishly forceful than the last (certainly drummer Henry Holmes was given lots of tubthumping headway), but that could just be the gap between live overenthusiasm and recorded discipline. Unfortunately – like so many shows at Brixton Academy – the overall sound was rubbish, with little separation between instruments, and no cut-through on vocals. It seems a waste of Teasdale's deliciously tart delivery if all you can hear is the audience shouting along. Yet somehow the overexcitable amateurishness of Wet Leg remains a significant, spirit-lifting element of their ridiculous appeal.