17 Music Something Else: Wet Leg/Inhaler at the Waterfront by Tristan pollitt appealing in the first place, feels fresh and exciting. There isn’t a silent corner of the venue. Wet Leg has gone off stage. The crowd has quietened down, though still alive. On an ordinary night this would be the end of the evening. But it’s far from being all over. In the next few minutes, the atmosphere in the room comes to stand still. Lights change colour, the stage darkens – then crashing drum beat guitar rift hard bass smooth indie rock vocals. Inhaler have arrived. And It Won’t Always Be Like This picks up from where Wet Leg left. They enthral the audience with their most popular song, evoking a time in the 1990s and early 2000s where British indie rock was the place to be. In approximately four minutes Elijah Hewson, Robert Keating, Josh Jenkinson, and Ryan McMahon revive the hard-edge spirit that was lacking in a lot of British music during the past decade. Not for a single minute do Inhaler ever lose a sense pace. Their whole performance wizzes by, playing hit after hit after hit. By the time they play Slide
Out The Window front man Elijah had fully embraced the aesthetic and role of a rock star. He jumps off the stage and lunges into the crowd, they’re hanging off every word as their performance reaches its thrilling climax. By the time the shows over and Inhaler have quickly ditched off the stage, there isn’t a single person who wasn’t shook to the core. As I sat on the steps outside of the Waterfront at 10:30pm, a few minutes after Inhaler had finished their set, I wrote this piece as a series of short bursts and scribbled notes. Since then, I haven’t been able to shake that night from my head. Seeing either one live would be a treat. Seeing both on the same night was something else.
Photo: Tristan Pollitt
You suspect most of the big British bands had their start in places like this. With the space too tight to fit this many people, where the lights – blue then purple – hang heavy in the air and mix with the smoke haze coating the room. In a seven-song set, singersongwriters Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, collectively known as Wet Leg, carry the audience through a post-punk soundscape, punctuated by clever innuendos. The first two songs go down well, holding attention with a steady tempo and lyrical precision. The audience applaud and shout. Afterwards you head to the bar to grab a drink whilst the duo retunes guitars and get us ready. From the first few notes of Wet Dream and then Chaise Longue you’re snapped from a lull and dragged straight into the world of Regina George and 2004s youth culture. With a dash a humour, Wet Legs almost single handedly stirs the punk genre into reinvention. Gone are the heavy heads and black and white photos. Here is a thoroughly new sound which, whilst maintaining what made the genre so
Rolling Stone Magazine, Are These Really the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time?
By matthew stothard
Ranking music is a bizarre idea. Whilst it makes sense to rank your own favourite songs, to try to be representative of wider society’s views is nigh on impossible. Rolling Stone Magazine consistently insists on trying though, and its latest effort was published last month when it revealed what it deems as the ‘500 Greatest Songs’. To be fair to them, whilst many absurd music lists which can only be read with a puzzled expression fixed on your face are made by one or two journalists,
their effort was rather more scientific, asking more than 250 figures from across the music industry to list their 30 favourite songs. Did that make it any better? No, well not to me anyway. The problem with ranking music is that reactions to songs are about as subjective as you can get. Besides the fact that the highest ABBA were ranked was 286th, which is objectively musically criminal and indicative of the list’s narrow focus on American and British artists, I
would be surprised if anyone could agree on the validity, or otherwise, of the results. To take one example, The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever is ranked at No.7, whilst its double A-side Penny Lane comes in at No.280. Many may see this as a consensus view, yet I would swap the two around. No one will ever agree on a ranking of music. They can be a bit of fun, mainly to disagree with, but should not be taken too seriously.
