Wet Leg On Hovercrafts And Being Sugary Sweet SCary

The Isle of Wight, as well as being the hometown of the Grammy award-winning band Wet Leg, is home to the world’s oldest theme park, Blackgang Chine. 

The park that opened in 1843 was named after a chine (a steep-sided ravine) in the soft Cretaceous cliffs, and according to Wikipedia, the theme park houses zero rollercoasters. It was also the pre-fame workplace of Wet Leg’s frontwoman, Rhian Teasdale, where she was a majestic walk-around character. Half the band still lives on the island that’s a few miles off England’s South Coast; however, they haven’t been spending much time there recently, instead doing laps around the world touring on the back of their recent album Moisturiser. 

On tour was where the band was when I called Rhian – they’d just arrived in Chicago, where they were playing that night – to talk about the Isle of Wight, previous jobs, music videos, the Moisturiser album cover and why love songs are scary. 

How did you make it out of the Isle of Wight and not get stuck working at Butterfly World or Blackgang Chine for the rest of your life?

Oh my god, I know. I actually worked at Blackgang Chine and did them quite dirty. I was working there for the winter, and when summer hit, I was like, ‘Bye!’ It was pre-lockdown, and I tried to go to university again for the third time – I dropped out of three different courses that were the exact same but in different places. 

What were you studying?

Just music courses, which were all kind of pointless. Each time I went, I was like, ‘I hate this, I hate everyone, I hate myself.’ So yeah, tried to go to uni, dropped out, and then I started working at an ice-rink. I had a friend from the Isle of Wight who was a stylist in London, and I invited her to come ice skating. I was holding on to her and guiding her around the ice-rink. That day was how I got into styling. When I started styling, I had a bit more time and money, which is when Hester [Chambers] and I started Wet Leg. I had moved to London, and Hester was on the island, so whenever I had time off, I would go down to the island to play music.

Damn, you must’ve been spending so much time on the hovercraft.

Yeah… How do you know all this? Have you been there?

I’ve never been there, but my friend’s family is from there, and he grew up in Portsmouth, so I asked him for facts about the island [laughs].

That’s crazy, you’re well in there with the Isle of Wight facts, I’m very impressed.

What were you doing at Blackgang Chine?

I was a walk-around character.

What was your character?

I was a magical time-travelling inventor and wore a big ginger wig. The bad thing was she was supposed to be a science whiz, so all these seven-year-olds would come up to me spitting bars about science and in a majestic voice, I would be like ‘Ooo, yes, wonderful, very good.’ Then they’ll be asking me about science, and I’d be stuck there with no idea [laughs].

That would be the hardest character job, needing to really know how to be this character because the kids are so into it.

They were very into it and were so disappointed when I was like, ‘Go and make some potions over there.’ There was a potion shed where you could go and mix different coloured glitters. Some of the more informed ones were clearly like, this is so naff, and I see right through you.

How is it living in London and going back and forth from the island to make music? You guys are still split, right?  

Yeah, we’re still split between London and the island. Our drummer, Henry, has moved to London now, which is nice because when we’re using airports so much these days, it’s good to be close to one. I don’t know how the others do it; they get to go home a lot less, so I really feel for them.

When the album came out, there was so much discussion around the cover being creepy. I remember even seeing a reel of some guy talking about how creepy he thought tube stations were, then he panned to the Moisturiser cover which was on a poster on the wall and was like ‘Then I see this on the wall, this is scary’. What’s your favourite reaction someone had to the album cover?

[Laughs] I love that. My favourite thing that I’ve seen people do is people holding the album cover, squatting down, assuming the same position I’m in and doing the horrible smile, it’s just the most demented thing. I love it.

How did you come up with the idea of that photo being the album cover?

I really wanted to work with Iris Luz, who shot the album cover. We’d kind of been away from having our photos taken or talking to anyone outside our immediate circle, so we thought it would be a good idea to go on a little getaway together to just hang out, take photos and get to know each other. I really loved her work, but we’d never met. We rented a house in the countryside for a weekend, and took loads of photos. When we got the photos back, there was this one where I am in the demonic position, which I really liked. My partner and I retook that photo and were playing around with it, being like, what if we made the hands like crow’s feet, gave me a horrible, synthetic smile, and made my skin really sweaty. The thing we made at the end of it was so grotesque, and it felt really interesting, in an evocative way. When we went into doing the album cover shoot, I knew what I wanted to get out of it.

It's cool having this jokingly demonic album cover for an album full of really wholesome, fun and loving songs.

They are wholesome, but some of them are so sugary sweet that they’re scary.

Which songs on the album scare you?

“davina mccall” scares me, but that’s the sweetest one. “CPR” is quite desperate [laughs].

What scares you about them?

There is a big vulnerability in writing about love. There are so many love songs out there, so the only way of there being a point in writing a love song is to put yourself into it. When you’re in love and letting someone love you, there is a vulnerability there in having to let each other in.

Do you think that vulnerability comes out in writing a song like that?

Yeah, I think it does. I wasn’t very focused on thinking that a lot of people were going to hear this, but every so often, that thought would creep in, which makes it a bit scarier.

Is that thought creeping in more as the band gets bigger and more people are listening to the music? 

It does occasionally, but we’re all reluctant to take any real notice of it; we all try to keep that feeling at arm’s length and focus on cocooning ourselves as a core band, shutting everything else out. When we wrote the album, we got a house in the countryside, which was really cool. It’s nice having the resources to come together in a fairly remote place, but at the same time, it was this sort of “pinch me” moment. It was really efficient in blocking out outside noise, but at the same time, you’d be like, ‘why are we here?’ and it’s the realisation that now it’s our job to make this album that people are going to hear. As much as we made the effort to forget about everything, being in this very fortunate situation was kind of like a reminder that this is what we do now as our jobs, which is crazy.

It must feel so crazy, where for all five of you, it’s your job.

Yeah! It’s very sick. I feel like we’ve all finally settled into it.

Was it a hard adjustment?
Yeah, it kind of was. I didn’t know anyone who did music at this level we’re at now; I never even wanted or saw that for myself because I couldn’t imagine it. When we started the band, I thought maybe we’ll sign to a cool indie label such as Domino and all will still work our jobs, but in the summer, we’ll play festivals, have a few shows and go on a two-week tour of the UK. That’s all I had planned for us if everything went well. 

For sure, it’s something so hard to imagine, especially when you can’t see examples of it. 

It’s crazy because being in an indie band in the UK, it’s so normal to keep your job, even while playing festivals and touring. 

Definitely, I feel like that's a normal thing everywhere. 

Yeah, totally. It’s quite nice for it to be our jobs, it really is.

Music videos seem to play such a big role in the Wet Leg universe; you guys seem to put in such a big emphasis and lots of effort into them. I’d love to ask more about it to wrap this up. Where does that enjoyment of music videos come from?

I love making and working on them. It’s really fun at thirty two to just be playful, do lots of world-building and make these videos. It really feels like the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, the bow on top [laughs].