Month: January 2022

A few days ago, Neil Young threatened to take his music off of Spotify due to the platform’s relationship with Joe Rogan, a threat he later made good on. Since Young first made his thoughts heard, he has gotten a bunch of support online, so much so that it prompted #CancelSpotify to become a trending topic on Twitter yesterday (as Consequence notes). Some of that activity on Twitter came from fellow artists who have Young’s back.

Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz encouraged her followers to take action, sharing a link to a pre-existing anti-Spotify petition and writing, “30,000 artists signed a petition in 2020 outlining why spotify was bad for us (this before daniel ek made massive military industrial complex investments) and if you are just now paying attention thanks to neil young… welcome! sign on!”

Other artists who weighed in include David Crosby, Peter Frampton, and Sebastian Bach.

Eve 6, as they tend to do, also came through with a bunch great tweets about the situation. In the most serious of them, they write, “i honestly didn’t think neil young meant to follow through with this and that even if he did there was no way his label would allow it. he meant it man. respect.” Meanwhile, one of the funniest reads, “just ran some numbers and neil young stands to lose 4 dollars over the next twenty years.” Check out Eve 6’s tweets below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ted Cruz is at it again. He consistently embarrasses himself whenever he talks about TV or movies, but he can’t help it. This week, he tweeted about Fight Club and received (Cancun) comeuppance. This followed Ted’s strange take on Watchmen (he believes “rabid environmentalists” are the real supervillains) and the noted The Princess Bride superfan’s silly feud with Cary Elwes. Yet Ted never learns, so he decided to show off his Marvel Cinematic Universe knowledge while defending Ant-Man and The Wasp star Evangeline Lilly’s anti-vaxxing stance.

Lilly, like Sarah Palin, couldn’t seem to make up her mind at the start of the pandemic. She first publicly refused to self-isolate before apologizing over her “arrogant” and “dismissive” remarks. And it seems like she’s back to square one with her attendance at an anti-vaxxer D.C. protest to “support bodily sovereignty.” Lilly also posted her thoughts on Instagram, where she declared her opposition to workplace mandates and how anti-vaxxers are shunned by society. “This is not the way,” Lilly declared, and Ted was happy to support that sentiment.

“Not all heroes wear capes,” Ted tweeted with a link to a news story about Lilly’s anti-vaxxer crusade. “But some do.”

Lilly and Cruz both miss the point on how there’s really no “excommunication from society” (which is how Lilly put it) to be found. It’s common sense for vaccinated people to not want to be in close proximity with the unvaccinated because (and this is not difficult science) that’s how the virus spreads. That’s not the most relevant point here, though, because — in true Ted fashion — he’s botched another area of pop culture. Do you see a “cape” on Lilly’s MCU character, Wasp, at all? Nope, because she has to have room for her wings.

Ted Cruz strikes out again. And it remains to be seen whether Lilly will see repercussions for her anti-vaxxer cheerleading with the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania shoot on the horizon. And in other Cruz news, he’s also been tweeting about “Whole Foods” while retweeting comedian Karl Hess, who had briefly changed his account handle to “ted cruz is the zodiac killer.” It’s almost like he enjoys people taking shots at him, right?

It says a lot about a person’s state of mind that they would more readily believe the U.S. Intelligence Community is using its time and resources to fabricate threats from Russian than that Russia would be plotting a cyberattack on the U.S. in retaliation for our attempts to help Ukraine—which is on the verge of war with Russia—better defend itself against Vladimir Putin and his people. But that’s exactly where we found ourselves on Thursday night, when Donald Trump Jr.—shouty as ever—called bullsh*t on the well-sourced rumblings that Putin has put his best people on planning a massive cyberattack on America.

As Raw Story reports, Trump Jr.—who is regularly featured on Fox News as a political pundit, despite having no political experience whatsoever—railed against the U.S. Intelligence community and made the outrageous claim that there is no threat to America from Russia. “I imagine that’s our people lying to us to try to instigate getting us into another war to distract from the incompetence,” Trump Jr. said.

The most disturbing part of Trump’s rant was when he claimed he gets to read intelligence reports?! While his father, as a former president, would have access to this information, “Aimless Adult Son of Former President” is not typically a job title that gets a person that kind of security clearance.

As Raw Story writes, “Trump Jr. then went on to claim that Ukraine is ‘calling in favors’ from Biden to cover up his son’s alleged corruption, despite the fact that multiple European countries are also sending military assistance to the nation.”

You can watch his unhinged rant below.

(Via Raw Story)

In 2021, Migos completed the rollout for Culture III, dropping videos for “Straightenin,” “Why Not,” “Roadrunner,” and “How We Coming” in addition to hosting their own three-day festival in Las Vegas and appearing on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. Now that they’ve reestablished their grip on pop culture as a group, though, it looks like they’re making another go at dropping solo releases. The first is Quavo’s new single, “Shooters Inside My Crib,” which dropped with an exuberant, flex-filled video.

Made up of both documentary-style footage of Quavo and his Migos fam on tour and in the studio and performance shots of Quavo crooning in luxury hotels and restaurant kitchens, “Shooters Inside My Crib” finds the band’s de facto frontman reflecting on the grind and the eventual benefits thereof. Decked out in glittering chains with diamond-covered Yoda pendants and banging away on his piano at home, Quavo shares his thoughts on remaining patient and persistent until patience and persistence pay off. “I was patient, now my ice go glacier” he sings on the chorus. “I was trapping out the vacant ’til I got some paper.” With Quavo preparing to release the long-awaited follow-up to his solo debut Quavo Huncho, it looks like there will be more of the same on the way.

Watch Quavo’s “Shooters Inside My Crib” video above.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Things are looking up for Saba. On the Chicago rapper’s last album, Care For Me, he came to grips with the trauma of losing his cousin and Pivot Gang bandmate John Walt to street violence, and in the last two years, he’s seen another member of the crew, Squeak, fall victim as well. So, you’d be forgiven for being surprised that his first new effort in three years, Few Good Things, takes a completely opposite tack compared to its predecessor.

This was intentional, as I learned during a Zoom call with Saba to discuss the new project and all he’s done since Care For Me became a fan favorite. That album, he says, is “so personal that it’s like my fans and people who are fans of that album, they now have an emotional connection to those songs and those lyrics in that time period. So going into this album, there’s something that you have to accept as an artist and that’s that once people develop an emotional connection and it’s not just an objective connection to something, that’ll be your best album regardless of what you do.”

This is why he approached Few Good Things as an “anti-Care For Me.” Creative decisions that would work for one wouldn’t work for another, so Saba had to reverse the formula that made Care For Me such a success – a risky move which he acknowledged, accepting that fans’ reception of the new work could go the other way as well. “Every decision we made on [Care For Me], how do we make the opposite decision on this one while still being original and organic and authentic to who I am? Because Care For Me is such a part of me, but also Few Good Things is a fuller scope of who I am.”

As Saba points out, there were as many years between those two albums as there were between his initial breakout on Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape and Care For Me. The same level of growth and evolution is evident, as well, although he sticks close to his roots as one of the products of Chicago’s Young Chicago Authors open mics. Those same open mics produced city standouts like Chance, Mick Jenkins, Noname, and the rest of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew Joseph Chilliams, Frsh Waters, MFnMelo, and John Walt. That sound – effortlessly complex, full of heady wordplay and surprising, off-kilter cadences – remains an anchor point for the 13 songs on Few Good Things, while Saba makes an effort to expand the sound beyond the muddled, rainy palette of his prior work.

For instance, on “Fearmonger,” produced by Pivot mainstays Daoud and Daedae, a bright bassline underpins a stripped-down instrumental as Saba meditates on the nature of the near-constant anxiety that comes with growing up at the lower end of the income spectrum – and seeing that course slowly reverse through his own precarious efforts. Not only does the song represent a hard left turn from the introspective material he’s best known for, but he also shared it as the first single from the album as an intentional bid to reset fans’ expectations ahead of time.

“We dropped ‘Fearmonger’ first because it’s the most sonically opposite of the entire Care For Me album,” he explains. “I wanted to scare people, I wanted them to not be sure how they felt about it and that to me is what pushes sonic boundaries, especially in hip-hop.” He offers an even wider perspective, pointing out that, “it’s a lot of monotony, it’s a lot of the same, so I think when I do a record like ‘Fearmonger,’ I want to put that out and push that because there’s an individualistic approach to the conception of that record. So, some fans might hear that and not understand how to listen to it but based on fan-hood and them wanting to like it — because fans want to like the music — some of them will listen until they do like it. And I think that’s how music’s meant to be listened to.”

Putting out a song called “Fearmonger” in the hopes of scaring people out of complacency – and doing so so completely fearlessly – is a bold move, but the rollout for this project is full of them. In addition to the album, Saba has shot a short film, also titled Few Good Things, hoping to capture the spirit of the music. He also betrays next to no apprehension about switching disciplines, instead displaying the same bold confidence with which he talks about juking fans’ expectations.

“I think the cool part of being able to play music, but music specifically that is lyric-based, is that we’re able to use our language to set scenes,” he explains. “We can make our language really visual, and I think that’s one of the elements that make telling personal stories, firsthand, telling things that are valuable to me, I think that’s one of the things that makes it unique. It makes people connect to it, but I think it’s always been, with our writing style, it’s always been really visual.” That skill, he says, is critical to making the leap into a visual medium. “When we started really locking in and working on this album, the director of this film, C.T. Robert, was really close,” he says.

“Every song that got done, he got immediately. We talked. We had full conversations, pretty much every time anything new got added to the mix, where we broke down family stuff. We broke down the lyrics. We broke down everything so that it was really open, in terms of the writing of the film, while also the writing of the album was happening simultaneously.” However, he’s still not sure how he feels about the movie or the album, yet, because they’re not out there in the world where viewers and listeners can consume them – his one concession to the artistic anxiety he’s been able to somehow escape throughout the process.

“I think I’ll experience that the day of the screening, the day it’s public, the day everybody is able to see it,” he says, “because that’s the day that it’s going to feel like, ‘Alright. This is real. This is tangible. We’ve released this.’ I’m so used to having things months and months and months in advance that it almost is imaginary until it’s released. This album, even Few Good Things, it’s been music that has been done for months and months and months. So, to finally be releasing it next week now, it’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling.”

As far as what he wants those fans and consumers to take away from the concept of Few Good Things, he offers a few examples of the things that have become important to him and sustained him through the tough times that aren’t even all that far in the rearview. “One thing that I got from these last couple of years is time,” he observes. “I got a lot of my time back, and in having that time, you’re able to realize how valuable just that is. Just being able to spend your time how you want and not having to make choices based on necessity and survival and all of this other shit, but just how would you spend your day if you could spend your day how you wanted to spend it and that’s what true wealth equates to.”

Few Good Things is out 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. You can pre-save here.

Chris Brown is being sued by a woman who says he drugged and raped her on a yacht, according to Rolling Stone, which obtained a copy of the lawsuit. The woman, a choreographer, dancer, model, and recording artist, is asking for $20 million; the lawsuit says that the incident took place on December 30 near Diddy’s Star Island home, where the boat was docked.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, says a friend invited her and another woman to the yacht, where Brown expressed an interest in helping her with her music career. She says after Brown made her two drinks, she became “disoriented, physically unstable, and started to fall in and out of sleep.” Brown allegedly led her to a bedroom, blocked her attempts to leave, undressed her, and raped her. The next day, he also allegedly told her to take a Plan B pill.

In a statement, Jane Doe’s attorney, Ariel E. Mitchell of Vrabeck Adams & Company, said, “My partner [George Vrabeck] and I want to ensure all parties are held accountable so that we may begin to eradicate this behavior from our society.”

Brown appeared to address the accusation on his Instagram Story, writing, “I hope y’all see this pattern of [cap]. Whenever I’m releasing music or projects, ‘THEY’ try to pull some real bullsh*t.” Brown was previously accused of rape in Paris in 2019, however, the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

While Disclosure and Zedd are two of the world’s most prominent electronic artists, they don’t necessarily run in the same circles. While Zedd has made a name for himself with pop-leaning collaborations like “The Middle” (with Maren Morris and Grey), “Stay The Night” (with Hayley Williams), and “Clarity” (with Foxes), Disclosure is more associated with electronica and house music — although they’ve also teamed up with big artists, like Khalid, Mac Miller, and Chloe x Halle.

Now, the two have joined forces on a new joint effort, “You’ve Got To Let Go If You Want To Be Free.” The dancefloor-ready track proves Disclosure and Zedd are a winning combination, which makes sense given that they both have a ton of experience in playing well with others.

Leading up to the track’s release, both Disclosure and Zedd shared some behind-the-scenes clips of them working on it in the studio. Disclosure also shared the track and wrote, “It was an absolute pleasure to work on this one together. We hope you all enjoy it!”

Listen to “You’ve Got To Let Go If You Want To Be Free” above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“What sets you apart from other candidates?”

It’s a common question for applicants in a job interview, and actress Chloe Cherry has a better answer than most. Before being cast in season two of HBO’s Emmy-winning series Euphoria, she appeared in a Euphoria porn parody.

“My friend and I, who’s also an adult movie star, we were just both huge fans of the show and we thought that that one scene [with Rue and Jules] was just so beautiful,” she told Nylon (presumably this scene from season one). “When you’re making a porn parody, the best way to make them is scenes like that, where they’re already insinuating that sex is about to happen. So that’s usually what people would want to see in terms of a porn parody. Fans really, really liked it. They thought it was awesome.”

The Better Call Saul casting department is about to be overwhelmed with self-taped videos of “Saul” and “Howard” finally revealing their true feelings for each other.

Cherry also told Nylon about the transition from starring in adults films to prestige HBO dramas. “It’s funny because when I think about from me before I was an actress of any kind, I as a viewer never really saw difference between different kinds of movies. To me, it was all like, you’re all acting, you’re all beautiful people,” she said.

(Via Nylon)

Even Jesse Watters‘ co-hosts didn’t want to hear it when the Fox News anchor started going on a rant about Vice President Kamala Harris. During Wednesday night’s episode of The Five, Watters accused Harris of “acting like a tourist” and he’s tired of seeing articles about “her feelings” on dealing with Washington D.C. However, things went off the rails when Watters started painting Harris’ predicament as a “typical female problem,” which is when his co-hosts Jeanine Pirro, Dana Perino, and Geraldo Rivera tried to cut him off before Watters could finish his sexist thought.

Via Media Matters:

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): And I’m sorry to say this, but many people are saying this, I’m not saying this, but many people are saying that this sounds like a typical female problem. She’s talking —

GERALDO RIVERA (CO-HOST): Jesse —

WATTERS: I’m not saying that. I’m saying this is what people are telling me. They say the first female vice president comes in there and every single —

JEANINE PIRRO (CO-HOST): Okay, Dana —

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): You better stop.

PIRRO: We don’t want to hear it.

Despite the protests from his co-hosts, Watters kept going on how he’s tired of hearing about Harris’ feelings. “She chose this job,” Watters said. “She ran for president, she said yes to VP, and every article is, ‘She’s sad.’”

Of course, this isn’t the first time Watters’ co-hosts have tried to rein him in. Just last week, he got fact-checked by Geraldo Rivera after Watters said that Joe Biden “allegedly got more votes than any other person in American history.” Realizing Watters was dipping into Big Lie territory, Rivera immediately cut in and asked, “Why do you say allegedly?” Watters, as he does, just kept going.

(Via Media Matters)

Last year, few singles connected with fans and critics more than Wet Leg‘s “Chaise Longue.” (In fact, the song was No. 17 on Uproxx’s year-end songs poll.) Written by Wet Leg co-founders Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers over a relaxing holiday season, “Chaise Longue” is a three-minute burst of simmering post-punk with speak-sing vocals, jagged-lightning guitars and propulsive rhythms. On the surface, the song is simple; however, its arrangements are like a brilliant puzzle stitching together disparate instrumental parts, vocal melodies and syncopated sections, like the bridge’s “On the chaise longue, on the chaise longue, all day long on the chaise longue.”

While the song’s name refers to a piece of actual furniture at Hester’s house, the lyrics themselves are also delightfully absurd, a tongue-twisting pastiche of images that’s like a grown-up nursery rhyme. There’s cheeky irreverence (“Is your muffin buttered? / Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?”) and sly wordplay that uses repetition and rhyming for effect (“Mommy, daddy, look at me / I went to school and I got a degree / All my friends call it the big D / I went to school and I got the big D”).

Although “Chaise Longue” was a brilliant success, it’s understandable that launching a music career during a turbulent time can be somewhat disorienting. “Six months ago, there were a couple of festivals happening, so you came out of lockdown and went into a big outdoor arena of 30,000 people,” Hester says. “And it was really daunting just walking around so many people. It was like, ‘At least we’re outside, but no one’s a meter apart.’”

However, the band are gearing up to release their self-titled debut album (it’s due April 8) and Wet Leg will be back in the U.S. in March (fingers crossed) after a sold-out fall 2021 tour that drew raves. Teasdale and Chambers Zoomed for a conversation during the early evening their time to discuss how “Chaise Longue” came together, its impact, and how a successful debut album can benefit a new band.

Where was the band at the point then when the song came together?

Rhian: We were doing the band. We just didn’t really write the song for the band.

Hester: We had played a couple of gigs as Wet Leg, but we hadn’t written “Chaise Longue.” And then we wrote it just for fun, rather than like, “This is going to be the next Wet Leg song.”

R: Yeah.

H: And then Wet Leg was like, “Yeah. Okay. Let’s have it.”

R: Yeah, we adopted it.

Sometimes when you’re being creative and not thinking, “I need to have it for a specific thing,” you can be a lot freer and a lot more open. There’s not as much pressure.

R: Exactly. I’ve had like conversations with a lot of friends who are making music, and they’ve just had similar experiences [where] their more successful, poppy songs have been written kind of like as a bit of a joke, as a bit of a, “Oh, okay. We’ve got like 15 minutes left of the session. Let’s just make something for the hell of it.” I feel like it’s a repeating pattern, it’s a recurring story.

I know there’s an actual chaise lounge. What does that look like?

H: It’s just a long, soft thing. It doesn’t have an arm. And it’s blue. Yeah. It’s just, it’s old and long and blue.

It sounds very comfortable, which is also conducive to creativity.

H: Oh, it’s actually really lumpy.

Oh, no!

R: It’s characterful.

H: Yeah. It’s a character-building experience to sleep on it.

R: I ended up sleeping on it for six weeks instead of [the intended] couple nights, like we both originally thought. It wasn’t a problem at all.

The days just kind of like ticked by. It was just Christmas holiday, and we’d been doing this six-week long, teenage girl sleepover. We watched the whole of Buffy, all of X-Files. We baked cookies every day, and my mouth hurt because I’d eaten so much sugar. [Hester laughs] My mouth literally hurt for the whole six weeks. But it was really good.
And Hester got really into painting, like these Bob Ross paintings. Loads of mountains. He has that like TV program — and so we’d put that on, and Hester would create masterpieces. I would give it a go, but then like end up smudging everything in. I had this brown canvas in front of me by the end of it, and Hester would have beautiful mountains and trees.

When this song came together, did you do lyrics first and music later, or was it sort of a combination of like both things at the same time?

H: It was just a silly jam. Joshua [Omead Mobaraki], who plays keys in our band, put down some drums, a synth line, and bass, and then Rhian was just freestyling the lyrics. And then we took it to the practice room. So we got real drums, and then we recorded it with Jon McMullen in London.

The structure — we sorted out the arrangement and Rhian, you finished off the lyrics. It definitely transformed over the time we worked on it.

R: You can hear the demo of “Chaise Longue,” it’s on the b-side of the seven-inch that we put out. That’s “Chaise Longue” in its purest form, pretty much. I say “chaise longe,” because that’s how I thought it was pronounced at the time. And then when we went into like the real studio, I thought I’d get my friend Google out and actually learn how to say it, and Google told me it was “chaise long.” So that’s what we went for. Well, there in the States you say “chaise lounge.”

Yeah.

R: Because it is a sun lounger, which makes sense. [sings] Tomato, tomato; potato, potato.

When the song transformed, did you feel that there was something special, or was it just sort of like, “Okay, this is another song in our repertoire.”

R: Mm. I think it was the first song we recorded. For me, I was more excited about the band, rather than the songs [as an] individual thing. I was just really excited to be making music with you.

H: We loved it when we first recorded it, and then the next morning we listened back to it and we were just like, “Oh my God, this is so silly, but really cool. We love it so much.”

R: We did about three songs in that first recording session. We did “Chaise Longue,” “Too Late Now,” and we did “Red X,” I think.

H: Yeah. That sounds right. And then some other ones that just stayed in the box.

R: I would love to listen to those.

It’s hard sometimes, because when you’re first doing something and you’re putting stuff out there, and you do something, you’re like, “Oh, is this going to work?” And then when you actually get to the final point, you’re like, “This is not working at all.” You’re like, “There needs to be some more work done on it.” Things sometimes click right away, and other times, it takes a bit.

R: Part of making music is just learning to put things down, to say things are done. Some things are done straight away and it’s obvious, and some things are done and you’re not satisfied with them, but that’s okay. They’re still done. It is what it is. Move on.

That can be so hard, because you could sit there and spend hours in the studio, just going over it to perfect it. This is why bands take two or three years in the studio. You want it to be perfect.

R: I think it was really good with “Chaise Longue,” and also making the album, because we didn’t really have any of that pressure. We were just very happily working our jobs, and so we never really thought anything of it. It put us on a really good start to enjoy it, basically. I think when you start putting pressure on yourself from the outside world, that’s when it probably becomes not so fun. And what’s the point if it’s not fun?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s why people have really gravitated toward the song. It’s so lighthearted and it’s fun to sing the lyrics; it’s kind of tongue-twisting. It’s just really joyous. And I know that you have said, “Oh, it doesn’t really mean anything.” And I think that’s okay! The entire vibe of it is very cathartic. And especially after the last couple years have been so hard for everyone, it’s a breath of fresh air. It’s not very serious, but it’s fun.

R: Yeah. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. Hester, I hope you don’t mind if I speak for the both of us on this, but we’ve had to interviews where people have been like, “Oh, so, like what does it mean? What does it mean? What’s the deeper meaning?” [Laughs.] And we’re like, “There is no deeper meaning. We just made it. It just ended up like that. It was an accident.”

“Chaise Longue” was Wet Leg’s debut single. When did you know or really sense that the song was really taking off, and was resonating with people?

H: When we first started playing gigs, that’s when we got to see in real life that people were actually listening to the song because they were singing it back to us. You can watch numbers on Spotify, see how many people have listened to it. But it’s just a number. You don’t see any faces in those numbers. I don’t know if this is making sense, but like…

R: Perfect sense. I agree.

H: So seeing people at gigs is like, “Wow, you are real. I can see you with my eyes.” That’s when it’s easy to tell.

I like the way you phrased that. Because I think that’s very true. Sometimes metrics of success now are view counts or listens, but there’s something different about being in the same room with someone, and maybe they’re screaming the lyrics back at you, or jumping around. It gives a little extra oomph that makes you realize, “This is real. This is in real life. This is translating.”

R: Hester, remember when we played in Paris, and we were like, “Oh, maybe we should do like the French version.” I learned the lyrics in French, because I thought it would be funny. And then when we gig and we tried to do them in French, I sang [sings French lyrics] and then after that, people were screaming the original lyrics, the English lyrics back at us so loudly. I was like, “Let’s just switch back into the English, because that’s what people are singing along to, because somehow all of these people in Paris know it is that.” Which was such a shock.

It really seemed like the song especially helped Wet Leg get a name for itself before you even came over to America. Was that also the sense that you had on your end?

H: “Chaise Longue” [has] done the complete opposite of, I guess, of what we thought would happen. Because when it first got mentioned, “Oh, we’re thinking maybe of going to America before the end of the year.” It’s like, “What? No, hold up. We’ve only played five places in the UK.” Going to America, it’s really cool how people there are listening to us from across the pond.

As a new band, what advantages and benefits did having a successful debut single give to you?

R: We signed to Domino mid-lockdown, before releasing anything at all. We prepped and had a bit of a… I don’t know, in lockdown, we made ourselves quite busy just to stay sane, really. And then ended up signing to Domino, which was just incredible. Like, so, so weird. And then we released “Chaise Longue.” That’s our first single. I mean, if it didn’t do very well, Domino being the big indie label that they are, they’d probably still support us. But it’s helped that it’s done really well. It’s given us more momentum to book the American tour, the first one and then the [upcoming] one in March as well.

In terms of recording an album, we’d recorded the album straight off the bat. As soon as we signed to Domino, we went into recording the album, just because of the times. We couldn’t gig. And so the way to make use of the time was to go straight into the studio and record the album. Maybe in the, I don’t know, in the ’80s or whatever, maybe that you could do that. But I know that now it’s certainly like a different landscape. When you get signed, maybe the label will send you on like a little tour so that you can get your material up to scratch, and tried and tested. And we took out loads of random stuff out of a Dropbox folder that we had going, and like, “This one? Yeah. This one? This one. Okay, let’s do this one.” It’s a bit of a different approach.

That is nice, though, when Wet Leg first came out, the first thing that people heard was your music. That’s what people are hearing first. There’s no preconceived notions.

R: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

You were able to make the single, and then also the record, in a really non-pressure filled environment. There were really no expectations; you could just create. And now that the single’s out and people know you all, do you feel any pressure on yourselves, the fact that people might have some expectations now? Have you felt that at all — and if so, how have you dealt with that?

H: Yeah, it’s definitely pressure, but there’s not really much we can do about it, other than just to make what we want to, and to see what happens. There’s so much music, and so many people, and hopefully the people who enjoy it get to listen to it. But yeah, I think it’s inevitable to feel pressure, because it’s like, “Oh, this [single] has done this. What would it mean if the next one doesn’t do as well?” But really, it’s all fine and good, I think. What do you think, Rhian?

R: I think so too. Of course, there’s so much pressure. But what are you going to do with that? It’s not very useful, so you have to push through it and realize that… Yeah, they’re little songs, and we’re very lucky to be in this position. We’re very lucky to be feeling this pressure, of people telling us that they want us to be really good or whatever. Because it’s… I don’t know.

We feel it, but it’s not really conducive, is it? It’s really nice when we’re just playing gigs and that’s what it’s all about, really, isn’t it? It’s about making music, not all the noise surrounding it. You have to remind yourself that quite often. But I think we’re really lucky, because we have each other, and we have our band, and so it helps us to stay sane, I guess.

H: Yeah. Maybe there’s a nice thing about “Chaise Longue” that we were the least in our heads we’d probably ever been making that song. That’s what has made it enjoyable, I think.

R: Yeah.

H: We’re trying to stay on the good side of the fence.

R: As much as possible.

H: I don’t know…

No, keep going. I’m just listening.

H: Oh, I was just going to say that I’m a very sensitive person. I don’t know.

R: I think you’re very strong, as well.

H: I’m like, “Oh, no. This is going to turn into like a therapy session for me.” [Everybody laughs.] No. No, it’s just that this is a strange and stressful, alien world to be in. So it’s okay to feel pressure, and to feel scared and almost like, you want to say, “No, I’m not going do any of this,” but actually seeing us do all the shit we’ve done so far, like, “Wow. We can do some things.”

R: I completely agree with you. I’ve been really in my head all day about everything, so this is like a really nice therapy session for me.

H: Yeah, same.

I think it’s so cool that you have this song that if things are stressful and there’s so much pressure, you have this song you can go back to. And for three minutes you have that carefree mindset. It’s just a way to like exhale. I think that’s so cool. That’s such a nice little thing to have in your pocket, that you can always bring out if things seem stressful.

R: Yeah. I have to say that every time we play it live, I find it really hard to take ourselves at all seriously. And I think that’s definitely not a bad thing.

Yeah. I think people like that. People can be afraid to be goofy sometimes, or let themselves let loose in public. And so it’s like, you are giving them permission, too, just to be like, “You can do this. You can be silly.” It’s almost like you’re a kid again and you’re singing nursery rhymes, or something.

R: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really nice way to look at it.

Have you had the chance yet to hear your song in a really unusual place, or an unorthodox place that you’re like, “I cannot believe I’m hearing myself somewhere”? Has that happened to you yet?

R: Yeah. I went to a café and they were playing it. Just a café that I would always go to before any of this [pandemic]. And I mean, they didn’t put it on, but it was probably on that Spotify algorithm. That was strange.

And I went into my pub, my local pub, and they were playing it there as well. Just as I walked in, and the barmaid was like, “Ooh, just in time.” I was like, “Ahh.” [Band laughs.] Though I think probably the strangest places you hear it are the everyday places, rather than like anywhere really grand. When it gets into your daily life, your normalcore daily-ness, that’s when it’s weird, rather than hearing it. I don’t know. It’s weird. It’s just very funny.

Wet Leg is out April 8 on Domino. Get it here.