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Music » From The Vault
Vicky Greer
@vickygreer33
Just a few years ago, it seemed like Isle of Wight duo Wet Leg had taken over the entire indie scene. From the moment their debut single ‘Chaise Longue’ dropped in the summer of 2021, their name was on everybody’s lips. By the time their debut album arrived in April of the following year, they were stratospheric. Securing a spot on Harry Style’s tour and a prominent set at Glastonbury, their straight-faced delivery and flippant lyrics made them irresistible to the masses.
In a musical landscape where albums are released in quick succession, and every movement is documented on social media, Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are outliers. Just like the off-kilter indie music they make, the pair aren’t following the well-worn path of others who have known the same viral fame. A two-year gap between albums is inconsequential in comparison with, say, The Cure, but sticks out against the rest of the 2022 cohort.
Other artists, such as Laufey and CMAT, who released a debut album in the same year, have all followed up with their second album in the years since. But from Wet Leg, nothing; not even a cryptic Instagram post from inside the studio.
So where have they been? There was little rest for Wet Leg in the aftermath of their debut. The duo embarked on an eye-watering touring schedule, which saw them play almost 250 gigs between 2022 and 2023. As well as their own headline tour, they played to huge crowds in their support slots for Harry Style’s Love On Tour shows.
Musically, they have made sparse appearances remixing Paramore’s ‘C’est Comme Ça’ and Depeche Mode’s ‘Wagging Tongue,’ the latter earning them a Grammy for Best Remixed Recording. Most recently, Teasdale featured on the song ‘Dig’ by Orlando Weeks. The band have also been notably silent on social media. At the time of writing, their last post on Instagram is from February 2024 after their Grammy win. As expected, the comments are littered with fans asking about the whereabouts of their mysterious second album.
When is Wet Leg’s new album coming out?
That said, it’s not like it’s been radio silence from the Wet Leg camp since they released their debut. Every time they appear on the red carpet, they’re met with questions about their next record, and while their answers offer a glimmer of hope for a new album in the future, their comments are also often vague and offer no timeline for release.
In late 2022, the band simply told NME that progress on album two was “very good, excellent”. They described the new music as “like the last one, but longer, bigger, better, faster, stronger and more fluorescent”. Earlier that year, they had described their second album as “in the bag”, but since then, there’s been no indication of when it will see the light of day. And during the many live sets that they have played since, they have never teased out a new track.
While their first album was glorified and celebrated in the charts, not everybody welcomed Teasdale and Chambers with open arms. Industry plant accusations were rife even before the album arrived. They are neither the first nor the last band to be bombarded with such complaints, which are evidently baseless from the slightest of research, with the title rapidly handed off to other young, predominantly female bands like The Last Dinner Party and Picture Parlour. Even still, the pressure to beat the flash-in-the-pan claims will make that difficult second album even more tricky.
The dreaded ‘second album syndrome’ always rears its head with artists almost as soon as they release their debut record. It feels like a lose-lose situation – either you can try to recreate the initial magic and be dubbed repetitive and unimaginative, or you can take bold steps forward and alienate your early fans. It’s a tricky balance to strike, but not impossible. The aforementioned contemporaries CMAT and Laufey released dazzling sophomore albums, and fellow guitar band Fontaines D.C. saw good on their early hype.
There are, of course, benefits to holding off on sharing their next offering. It’s better to have a well-thought-out, deliberate sophomore album than something slapped together to ride out a trend. But as time goes on, the pressure is building for Wet Leg to release something masterful – and no doubt divisive – to follow their extraordinary debut.
Are Wet Leg still together?
Above all, the speculation merely reflects how lauded Wet Leg have been so far. In truth, there is nothing all that extraordinary about their failure to follow up with a new record, given the monumental amount of time they have spent on the road, building their name and honing their chops after exploding. Also, given their success was a long time coming after various other scrapped bands and solo projects before Wet Leg, maybe it is unsurprising that they are enjoying things for a while before getting back to business.
Notably, they are back among the names on summer festival posters such as Primavera for 2025—usually, this is a solid sign that new music has been hushed to promoters, though the wider industry is yet to be informed of anything concrete.
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Wet Leg