If Wet Leg are a pop band, then pop is having the most delicious identity crisis of its life—and sign me up for the breakdown. On the second sold-out night at the O2 Academy, the Isle of Wight quintet strode onstage through a fog machine belching enough crimson haze to suggest a bonfire built exclusively from ex-boyfriends’ tote bags.
Before a note was struck, the whole room felt like the prelude to a séance: strobe lights twitching like they were trying to contact the spirits of Riot Grrrls Past, and Rhian Teasdale swishing her strawberry-blonde hair with the casual menace of a witch who’s just learned the hex for “mansplain.”
Opening with “Catch These Fists,” which landed like a slap of cold water—urgent, bratty, instantly destabilising.
Then “Wet Dream” slunk in, that rubbery bassline strutting around the Academy like it had been double-parked on Sauchiehall Street and didn’t care. Teasdale’s outfit—football socks, micro-shorts, sporty top and a determined knee support—made her look like a Little League star possessed by the ghost of Poly Styrene. A demonic PE lesson in the best possible way.
Center stage, a Palestine flag draped over a monitor drew a roar from the crowd—simple, unshowy, and defiant.
Each member of Wet Leg seems essential to the strange, joyful machinery of their sound.
Rhian Teasdale, feather-light voice sharpened with sarcasm, is the band’s chaotic narrator. Hester Chambers, calm and deadpan on guitar, brings the melodic intelligence—her playing is all unshowy precision, the ballast to Rhian’s theatrical chaos. Henry Holmes on drums adds the backbone: punchy, unfussy rhythms with a post-punk snap that keeps even their silliest lyrics grounded. Ellis Durand on bass is the sly engine of the whole thing, giving their songs that propulsive bounce—lean, elastic, and just a little mischievous. Josh Omead Mobaraki, switching between guitar and keyboards, adds the atmospheric glue: shoegaze shimmer one moment, synth weirdness the next.
Together they sound like the accidental lovechild of Elastica, The Breeders, and early Yeah Yeah Yeahs—spiked with the knowing wink of Chicks on Speed and the polka-dotted mischief of Le Tigre. There’s a wiry, indie-sleaze agility to their playing, but the delivery is pure 2020s hyper-self-awareness.
“Oh No” jittered with the anxious brightness that Wet Leg do so well, somewhere between caffeinated surf-rock and a garage band having a collective existential wobble.
The red haze deepened during “Liquidize” and “Jennifer’s Body,” underscoring the darker mood that seems to have settled into their newer performances. Less breezy, more deliberate—like the band have found the low end of their own humour and decided to live there for a while.
Mid-set, the now-famous scream moment of “Ur Mum” plunged the room into darkness. Then the howl began. Two thousand Glaswegians bellowing for so long it passed through catharsis into comedy and back again. When the band finally crashed back in, it felt like a pressure valve releasing.
“U and Me at Home” was soft-footed and sweetly off-kilter—like slow-dancing with a friend you didn’t realise you missed. “Davina McCall” and “11:21” showed their knack for blending slacker charm with emotional precision, and “Pillow Talk” hit heavier than expected, a reminder that Wet Leg’s punchlines don’t dull their ability to be loud, muscular, and strangely moving.
The standout moment came during “Too Late Now,” when bubbles drifted across the stage—tiny, iridescent ghosts catching in the lights. It wasn’t whimsical so much as disarmingly vulnerable, a soft moment in a set full of winks and barbs.
They closed with “Angelica” and “Chaise Longue,” the double-whammy everyone knew was coming and still screamed for. “Angelica” shimmered with grown-up melancholy; “Chaise Longue” swaggered with its usual surreal confidence, still sounding like a private joke shouted across a dancefloor that the whole world accidentally overheard.
But it was “Mangetout” that ultimately finished the night—stranger, moodier, and more muscular than anything before it. Live, the song felt like Wet Leg tipping their hand, revealing a heavier, more atmospheric future lurking beneath the cheeky surface. Its closing chords hung in the room like the aftershock of something bigger than a punchline—less wink, more warning.
By the end, Wet Leg had turned the O2 Academy into a messy, ecstatic altar to millennial neurosis and post-pandemic swagger. They’re pop. They’re punk. They’re performance-art gremlins with guitars. Whatever they are, they’re getting sharper—darker around the edges, brighter in the centre.
And if this is pop?
Then we should all be so lucky to drown in its bubbles.
Wet Leg play Concert in the Gardens at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay on 31st December 2025, in West Princes Street Gardens with support from Hamish Hawk and Lucia & the Best Boys. Tickets via www.edinburghshogmanay.com
Words: Angela Canavan
Images: Marco Cornelli
The Golden Bough 