It can sometimes take musicians a decade – or their entire career – to get to Lollapalooza, let alone travel overseas to perform at the festival. Wet Leg did it in about three years.

Wet Leg is made up of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers from the Isle of Wight which is a small speck in the south of the UK. The duo have since carved out a place for themselves in the already crowded genre of lyrical indie-punk rock, similar to bands like Dry Cleaning and Idles.

The duo’s music is catchy and their lyrics are of a funny kind that can almost be heard in the half-baked jokes that eventually turned into indie-punk meditations on the mundane.

“Is your muffin buttered?” Teasdale sang on “Chaise Longue”. “Do you want us to like someone to butter your muffin?”

Wet Leg’s humor can be immature at times, but aside from a somewhat stealthy debut at Lollapalooza on Friday, it turns into an exceptionally creative, intelligent and eclectic group that deserves to be near the spearhead of a British independent invasion, hopefully. .

Wet Leg performed an afternoon show on Lollapalooza’s Discord stage on July 29, which started off with a bit of reluctance from a somewhat static crowd before transforming over time. By the end of the show, a mosh pit had formed near the front to the beat of the chorus of “Chaise Longue”.

The group came together in 2019, so the relatively new artists still have a bit of work to do before they gain popularity and the discerning ears of American listeners.

Evanston native and Wet Leg outsider Jacob Brown, who showed up early on the Discord scene after hearing rapper Jasiah, said he came on as a way to ‘kill time’ , as well as hearing something a little more “cold”. .”

“It’s early afternoon, so I feel like going to EDM that early would be hard to sustain,” he said in reference to the often chaotic multitude of dance music. electronics and DJ sets that take place during the day.

Although the show started “chill”, the mood did not last.

Teesdale and Chambers opened the set with the buzzing jam-ballad, “Being in Love”. It was arguably the weakest moment of the show.

The best songs from Wet Leg’s posthumous albums are the ones that really leave Teesdale and Chambers enjoy yourself, which doesn’t seem to happen quite so much when Teesdale is confined to a whisper register and when the dueling guitar intonations the two women skillfully play together are inaudible.

The head shakes and shuffling feet turned into more active participation in the show about halfway through when tracks like the marching “Oh No” and “Ur mum,” a song about lazy, insensitive men, are appeared.

Just as good as the banter and commentary from a sneering Teesdale throughout the show – who seemed to enjoy the time she had on stage – was the duo’s perfectly coordinated guitar work, which went hand in hand. is combined to create heartbreaking and crackling melodies that served as springboards for the little stories that each song contains.

The cheery crowd joined in the double meanings of songs like Chaise Longue, chanting, “Mom, dad, I graduated / I went to school and got the big D.” There were even more obvious lyrics that implored a certain hypothetical audience member in the front row to come backstage, which Teesdake sang with an impish grin.

At the start of the show, Teesdale made a joke about Lollapalooza previously sounding like him as “loser” with a British accent.

“More like lollapawinna, am I right?” she bet.

The crowd, admitted to the joke, laughed and groaned in equal measure.

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