Fame can be fatal for young musicians. Some curdle into pompous divas with chart-topping success, while others blossom into the charmingly eccentric stars they were always destined to be. Judging by this riotously entertaining show, Wet Leg remain firmly in the latter camp, still half-drunk on the head-spinning surrealism of their relatively new-found stardom. “I feel like we’re inside a big, lovely cake,” grinned the Isle of Wight band’s magnificently monikered lead singer Rhian Teasdale, sounding as ever like a tipsy debutante who had just arrived by time machine from 1953.
Part of the annual run of Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concerts, this show offered a rich mix of of female musical talent. Opening for Wet Leg was CMAT, aka Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, a 27-year-old country-pop singer-songwriter who has already topped the charts in her native Ireland. With her fizzing comic energy, Thompson caught some of Dolly Parton’s self-aware humour in witty, tongue-in-cheek numbers like the unrequited love serenade Peter Bogdanovich and the bawdy, boisterous No More Virgos. Between camp dance-off interludes with her male keyboard player, she also managed the impressive feat of coaxing most of the Albert Hall audience into a line-dancing two-step, and did the splits to raucous applause.
