July 22nd, 2021 1:39pm
I Got The Big D
Wet Leg “Chaise Longue”
A few months ago I wrote about the boom of English bands playing post-punk style music with half-spoken vocals and I wish I could have retroactively worked Wet Leg into that piece because their debut single is truly one of the best specimens to come out of this aesthetic thus far. “Chaise Longue” cruises along on a slightly twitchy groove that gives off a “let’s go out for a joyride…but oh my god, what if we get caught???” energy, and features a vocal performance by Rhian Teasdale that’s coy and mysterious, but overtly sexual. A lot of the lyrics feel like Teasdale deliberately writing things that are theoretically subtle in saying something very horny, but actually landing on something that’s more lewd and lascivious. (“I went to school and I got a degree / all my friends call it ‘the big D’,” “Is your muffin buttered? / Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?”) The tone is playful, even more so when they start flirting with theoretical audience members in a deadpan tone, but there’s just enough ambiguity and vague menace to in the track to keep it from feeling cutesy or like a novelty. It’s more of a trickster thing – they’re clearly fucking with you, and they’re very good at it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.