ACL Interview: Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale Is Learning to Be Self-Indulgent

Chaise longues, wet dreams, lobster claws: Wet Leg burst out of the Isle of Wight and into the Recording Academy’s hearts with their zippy, irreverent 2022 self-titled debut. Songwriters Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, who met as teenage music students, formed the band as a duo, but enlisted drummer Henry Holmes, multi-instrumentalist Joshua Mobaraki, and bassist Ellis Durand to tour with them as their infinitely catchy, post-punk-textured indie rock made fans of Harry Styles and Dave Grohl alike. 

The band wrote LP2, July’s moisturizer, as a fivepiece, and it shows: its 12 songs, from characteristically sassy lead single “catch these fists” to creeping opener “CPR” to aggro bedroom romp “pillow talk,” feel beefier than anything on Wet Leg. The bigger development? Lead singer Teasdale, while still goofy, is head over heels in love. Where her previous lyrics referred to relationships almost exclusively as exhausting breakup anthem fodder, the majority of her poetry here reveals full-out devotion to her partner, who is nonbinary. Like their accompaniment, her words are sweet, quirky, and destined to be belted by festival crowds – as they will at ACL Fest, when Wet Leg performs both Sundays at 4:30pm. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Austin Chronicle: How has the tour been? 

Rhian Teasdale: It’s been pretty chill, actually. A lot more chill than the last time, touring the first album. That was a big adjustment period. It was difficult to ask for the things you need to be happy [while] touring because you’ve never experienced it before, so then you don’t even know what your boundaries are or how many gigs you should be doing in a row or how long you can be out on the road and be happy. So now we definitely, all of us, know what to expect of touring a bit more and have been able to ask for a few more comforts. 

AC: When “Chaise Longue” and “Wet Dream” came out, you guys had the kind of instant, runaway success that I feel like you don’t see in rock music anymore. Did you feel any pressure to compete with that with moisturizer? Or, on the other hand, did you feel like you wanted to go the other way completely? 

RT: There’s a bit of nervousness, because obviously the first one was so well received, but I think there’s also the luxury of [how] now we are full-time musicians and this is all that we have to do in an allotted period of time: write some songs, write an album. Whereas before, with the first one, we were all working jobs and weren’t as committed because there are lots of other distractions and responsibilities that you have being in the real world. Now, just being able to go away and rent a house and set the rest of the world out and be very self-indulgent and romantic with it… Sure, there was pressure, but also it was like, OK, cool. This is such a nice opportunity to have and such a nice position to find ourselves in. 

AC: In between albums the band became a real fivepiece, and you wrote moisturizer together. What was it like to not have this be yours and Hester’s baby anymore? 

RT: Most of us have known each other since we were 17. So we’ve all known each other for a very long time. And then as soon as we started touring, even though Joshy and Ellis weren’t necessarily there for the writing or the recording of the first album, as soon as you’re chucked out on the road together, you are a band. It was never like me and Hester and all our session musicians. I feel like we’ve been a band, internally, a lot longer than the rest of the world has really needed to know. 

AC: I definitely hear the album getting beefier as a result of that collaboration. 

RT: Yeah, definitely. Now when I listen back to the first album, it sounds just so unsure of itself and so delicate in places. Because we’ve been touring the songs from the first album for so long, and I hear them night after night [as] us playing them as the band that we are now. I hadn’t listened to the first album until we finished mixing the second album, and I was shocked. I did not recognize the first album at all, because to me, it hasn’t sounded like that for years. 

AC: One of the main things you’ve talked about being a real influence on this project is you falling in love with your partner, and you can hear it in the music. You still have some silliness and edge – like in “catch these fists,” of course – but there’s also a lot of earnestness and vulnerability. What was it like for you to get so personal in your music, especially now that so many more people are listening? 

RT: [I wasn’t] thinking, ‘What are the consequences of putting so much of my personal life into these songs?’ You don’t really think, ‘I’m gonna write this song so that I can be interviewed about it,’ or ‘I’m gonna write this lyric, but maybe I won’t, because people are gonna hear it.’ I think you just kind of have to compartmentalize that side of writing music and just not think about it. Otherwise, I think you’re gonna end up writing something that’s quite contrived or not completely true. 

AC: It’s kind of a queer rite of passage to be like, ‘I hate love songs, I don’t want to be gushy about a man,’ and then fall in love with someone who isn’t a cis man and be like, ‘Oh! I do want to be gushy!’ How has it been for you to come to terms with your queerness, either personally or in your music?

RT: What a revelation [laughs]. It’s funny, because we’re still playing songs from the first album as well, and it’s funny seeing some of the signs. I can see signs of a rejection of the heteronormative relationship. I can see signs of a baby gay in there. But I never really wanted to write about my romantic relationships with cis men… It just didn’t really feel very empowering. It didn’t interest me.

It’s such a trope, it’s a classic cliché to say that writing music is cathartic, but I think it really is, and I think I am someone that just can’t help but overshare. I do wear my heart on my sleeve, and I just have never felt so in love before. It’s such a big subject, but I definitely felt like a veil had been lifted and I just needed to write about what I was experiencing. 

AC: I just learned that you previously worked as a stylist, which makes total sense since your style is such a big part of your persona. Can you talk a little bit about the inspiration behind your current look, and why you wanted to change it up so significantly for this album cycle? 

RT: I can see that [it] is a complete vibe switch up, but also, so much has happened. When we were spawning the ideas of the creative world of the first album, that really was like five years ago, and that feels like a long time, because a lot has happened. And so I think it’s kind of only natural that I would have a little bit of growth in one direction or another. 

And I think also, since discovering my queerness as well, that just has such a big part to play in  my comfortability with my body and perhaps showing a bit more skin and feeling more empowered to do that. There’s been a lot of growth. And, of course, if you’ve only seen the “Chaise Longue” video and the “Wet Dream” era, and haven’t come to any shows, haven’t really been following us on socials, it will seem like quite a switch up, but it has been a long time and a lot has happened. So it wasn’t an intentional thing. It’s just gradually where I have come in how I want to express myself and how I want to present myself. And I think being an artist and getting to do the artist thing full time – there’s just so much room for self expression. 

I never really had that when I was styling. I did wardrobe assistant stuff, mainly for boring stuff like commercials, maybe the odd music video. But I would never really have time. I’d get up at 4am, go to the studio in a black T-shirt and jeans, and try and be as invisible as possible on set. So I think going from someone who is in a headspace of trying to make themselves as small as possible to now being allowed that artistic playground and freedom of, like ‘How am I feeling today? How do I want to present myself in relation to the music that I’m making?’ – I’m just being really self-indulgent with that. 

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