Latest news with #Cardigans
Spectator
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Irritatingly, Wet Leg's new album is pretty good
Grade: B+ There's quite a lot to dislike about Wet Leg, even aside from their stupid name. The entirety of their lyrical canon, for starters – vapid and petulant millennial inanities, 50 per cent performative braggadocio, 50 per cent adolescent carping. Or there's the commodification of their sexualities: they've traded up to being bi, just before the market peaks. Or there's Rhian Teasdale's frequent, bone-idle recourse to an affected, half-spoken monotone in lieu of, y'know, a tune – that shtick had begun to pall even before the end of their debut single, 'Chaise Longue'. Or the unremitting chug chug chug of the guitars and the fact that Teasdale sings in the manner of a 16-year-old when she's actually 32. All this and more. Trouble is, for all that, this is a good pop album. As conventional as it gets within a power-pop framework, from the typically childish kiss-off of 'Mangetout' to the rather affecting paean to Davina McCall called, you will be surprised to hear, 'Davina McCall'. 'Catch These Fists' is graced with crunchy power chords to alleviate the eternal chug, while 'Don't Speak' begins like Paul Westerberg but develops rather cutely into being a rather beguiling piece of what – if these people were older – would be called Heartland Rock. They even, in some of the more melodic moments, bring to mind the Cardigans (who were superior and much archer talents), although more often they recall a kind of slightly more savvy Shampoo, even if they have yet to come up with a song as irresistible as 'Delicious'. Still, against my better judgment, I rather enjoyed it. And isn't it lovely to see the Isle of Wight back on the rock map?
Vogue
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Hear Me Out: What If Gen Xers Are Actually the Cool Ones?
I am nine years old and my mother—in her mid-20s at the time—is vacuuming the living room while 'My Favourite Game' by the Cardigans plays on full blast. With each drum thwack she hits another corner with the power nozzle, bare feet padding across the carpet in low-rise jeans, me watching deadpan from the sofa. I will always associate that song with this memory. Sunlight splashing through the open window; those distorted vocals, turned up to full; and the big, blocky CD player, with speakers that make your hands shake if you touch them. Though I was born in the '90s—a millennial—I was raised by a dyed-in-the-wool Gen Xer, and was therefore spoonfed Gen-X culture from an early age. Our CD rack was full of '90s bands: Pixies, PJ Harvey, Placebo. The films I later became obsessed with were all of this era: Girl, Interrupted; Fallen Angels; Run Lola Run; Hackers. By the time I got into Bret Easton Ellis, Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, and Irvine Welsh—all Gen-X writers, with Gen-X sensibilities—something had become abundantly clear. I had been born 15 years or so too late. And now I was destined for a life of Instagram and Asos packages, as opposed to being a '90s slacker making mixtapes and hating on my corporate job. Over the past few years, generational warfare has only ramped up—so much so that it's become boring to even reference: Gen Z hating on millennials for being cringe, millennials hating on Gen Z for being puritanical, and everyone hating on boomers for being, well, boomers. But Gen X—born somewhere between 1965 and 1980—has been largely forgotten about (although even saying that has become a cliché of sorts). Alongside all of this finger-pointing among the generations are claims that, actually, we were the cool ones—no, it was me! But what if it's none of us? What if the cool ones are actually those unbothered people that nobody talks about?
