Both looks by Chopova Lowena, price on request, at matches fashion.com.
(Picture: Luc Coiffait )It was late summer in 2018 and Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers had spent the weekend at the End of the Road Festival.
The friends, who had first met as 17-year-olds in the Isle of Wight, were now both in their mid 20s. ‘It was late at night and there was a Ferris wheel at the festival,’ Teasdale recalls. ‘We’d seen it all weekend but never thought to go on it and now all of a sudden we were on it. Our hands were in the air. The wheel was going around. It was very mystical. We were looking into the night sky. It felt like anything was possible.’ It was there and then that the two friends decided to form a band, which they named Wet Leg. Their ambitions were modest: ‘We were both working in our jobs full time and we just wanted to have a way of continuing to do music alongside our jobs,’ says Teasdale, ‘and hopefully in the summer we could get booked for some festivals because festival tickets are quite expensive. We never thought about doing more than that.’
Wet Leg have somewhat exceeded initial expectations: their song ‘Chaise Longue’ has been streamed almost seven million times, they have been praised by superstars from Florence Welch to Iggy Pop and have been hailed as the hottest band in Britain right now. So hot in fact that my conversation with them was postponed twice — we were due to talk in person in London late last year and then last month but their schedule was so busy the only way to secure time was on the end of a phone while they were in a car in Berlin heading to the airport. ‘We’ve been to Madrid, Lisbon and now we’re in Berlin for a couple of days,’ says Teasdale. ‘It’s a promo tour which I never had any idea even existed.’ The travelling comes off the back of a tour that has seen the band play across Europe and the United States — all before their debut album has even been released.
The story of Wet Leg begins with Teasdale and Chambers meeting on the first day of college in 2012. They had both grown up on the Isle of Wight although both their families were from the mainland. They spent their youth on the beach and dabbling in music. ‘There’s not heaps to do so people come together and make music,’ says Chambers. Teasdale and Chambers started music degrees before dropping out. They played in various bands and as solo musicians but it was not until End of the Road that they decided to form a band together.
I think whatever you’re doing, [imposter syndrome] is inbuilt. You’re never going to feel like you’ve earned it or like you deserve it
In previous interviews they have claimed they named their band Wet Leg after randomly stabbing the keys of the emoji keyboard on a phone. ‘There’s another reason why the band is called Wet Leg,’ reveals Teasdale. ‘It’s Isle of Wight terminology for someone from across the water on the mainland. The band remained a side project while Teasdale and Chambers were kept busy with their jobs — Teasdale was working as a wardrobe assistant and Chambers worked for her family jewellery-making business. ‘I was in London and Hester was in the Isle of Wight,’ says Teasdale, ‘we’d come together when we could but with my job the hours were crazy — I would leave my house at 5am and not get back till 10pm.’ Teasdale returned to the Isle of Wight for Christmas and it was during this time that she and Chambers wrote the song that would launch the band. ‘I guess it was just like a stream of our consciousness,’ says Teasdale about the song’s lyrics. ‘We were staying up late a lot watching films and I was sleeping at Hester’s house on her chaise longue. The band recorded the song, which they called ‘Chaise Longue’, and the following day they listened back. ‘We just laughed, almost cringe laughing,’ recalls Chambers, ‘because it was so silly but it brought us joy.’ And then came the pandemic. ‘I went back to the Isle of Wight,’ says Teasdale, ‘we were able to use our band as a way of distracting ourselves from everything that was going on.’
It was not until they played Latitude Festival in summer 2021 that Wet Leg had any inkling how popular they were becoming. ‘We didn’t think that anyone would be there,’ says Teasdale. ‘We were so used to playing to crowds of about six. When we went to Latitude and there were actually people in the tent to play to. That was like, “Oh, this is interesting.”’ Things have continued to be interesting ever since: appearances on Jools Holland’s show, being signed to Domino and making the BBC’s Sound of 2022 list. The apparent speed with which it has all happened must be dizzying — did they sometimes suffer from imposter syndrome? ‘It’s not a syndrome,’ says Chambers, ‘it’s real.’ What struck me, I tell them, is the contrast between how some bands struggle and crave success but never achieve it while Wet Leg have achieved it while never absolutely clamouring for it. ‘I think whatever you’re doing, [imposter syndrome] is inbuilt,’ says Teasdale. ‘You’re never going to feel like you’ve earned it or like you deserve it.’
The album is only weeks away and they are unsurprisingly nervous and excited by how it will fare. Will they fade as fast as they emerge or will it establish them as around for the long haul? Only time will tell but for now Teasdale and Chambers are enjoying the beautiful strangeness of it all. The important thing, they say, is to recall the promise they made on that Ferris wheel back in 2018. ‘We didn’t have any of that as a goal or an agenda,’ says Chambers. ‘[This is all] 100 per cent unexpected and unintentional. We are very, very lucky. We just really wanted to have fun.’
