Happy New Year one and all, I trust you all enjoyed a good Season and that Santa rewarded you all for your forbearance over the year. I had a smashing time, spending time with most of the family (although the Boy and his new wife were forced to hole up alone with their first doses of Covid), eating and drinking well (my new favourite drink is a Negroni – and mutations of it incorporating various other spirits in the cupboard) and receiving a pile of tempting CDs from various friends and long-suffering family members.
New Year’s Resolutions are obviously a ridiculous construct, fashioned chiefly for sluggish journalists and over-keen TV presenters. I think we can all agree on this, but if I were to make such a Resolution it’d probably involve another nebulous attempt to listen to more new music. I’ve become very lazy about this over the last couple of years, seeing less live music and spending far too much listening time winding myself up about the parlous state of affairs in the news.
Anyway, in an obligatory nod towards a Resolution I shall no doubt look back on with some embarrassment in the summer, I give you this:
Wet Leg
A glance through Wet Leg’s wiki page reveals the extent to which I’ve really lost touch over this time. Three singles were released in 2021, one album last year and some talk of another in the offing, various gongs have been proffered, including Mercury Prize, Grammies and Brits nominations. For God’s sake they’ve even appeared on the Boogie-Woogie King’s studio-based miscellany. It comes to something…
No matter, I’m there now (as I’m sure I’ve said more than once in the past). Santa brought me the first album and I’m very keen on it.
Here’s Wet Dream from the record:
Who doesn’t love a lobster-clawed pillow fight in a corn field?
Pop Music’s a deceptively simple thing, isn’t it? A slew of captivating lyrics delivered with deadpan humour, a rhythm section that knows its job, a bit of twangy guitar. What’s not to like?
The aforementioned deadpan vocals belong to Rhian Teasdale and the twangy guitar comes from Hester Chambers, founder members of the band and college friends from the Isle of Wight. In an age of “nepo-babies” (that’s a thing, right? I read about it on Twitter), I love all this coming-out-of-nowhere stuff. There’s hope for the world.
Official videos are great and all that but you can see a band’s personality much more clearly, playing live, interacting with each other and an audience. There’s a lovely live set put on for everybody’s friends KEXP which you’d be daft not to watch in full:
There’s a whole lot of love in the room and the reactions from the two friends and their touring band are a pleasure to behold. Everyone is clearly having a blast.
Now there’s a New Year’s Resolution…
Partly Porpoise 