Review: Wet Leg at Millennium Square, Leeds

A terrific track that revived ’90s indie guitar music with sardonic lyrics – it referenced teen comedy Mean Girls with deadpan absurdity - it nonetheless carried the faint suspicion of being a novelty hit.

That impression wasn’t helped by the Isle of Wight band’s origin story, alluded to on ‘U and Me At Home’. “Maybe we could start a band as some kind of joke,” sings Rhian Teasdale, recalling the moment she and guitarist Hester Chambers hatched the idea while riding a Ferris wheel.

Yet here they are: a second album under their belt, emerging through industrial quantities of dry ice to a crowd familiar with every lyric.

Before that, however, English Teacher take the stage in front of a home crowd. Buoyed by the presence of friends - singer-guitarist Lily Fontaine pointing them out from the stage - the quartet are joined by a cellist for a tight, crowd-pleasing set.

From the wiry art-rock of ‘I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying’ to the prog-rock of ‘Nearly Daffodils’, their quietly political songs manage to be experimental while accessible. They even find time to throw in a new track, inviting the audience to submit titles.

Then it is time for dry ice and strobes to welcome Wet Leg. It’s a suitably preposterous entrance for a band who appear not to take themselves too seriously, and who still seem faintly surprised by the scale of their success.

Yet their appeal is easy to understand. At their best, the five-piece are an absolute blast.

Tracks like the gasping ‘CPR’ and witty break-up of ‘Wet Dream’ have the ring of instant familiarity, drawing on the angular riffs of Elastica and dynamic shifts of The Breeders.

Their eminently quotable lyrics also create just the right amount of audience interaction. No instruction is needed for the crowd to yell “What!” after Teasdale’s “Excuse me?” in ‘Chaise Longue’.

And while she does tee people up for the now-standard scream during ‘Ur Mum’, the sense of release remains palpable as the audience yells itself hoarse.

Teasdale also makes a terrific frontwoman, flexing her biceps and whipping around her dip-dyed pink hair.

Her presence helps steer the band through some of the slighter material. A mid-set change in tempo is standard practice but ‘11:21’, a rare moment of low-key reflection on Moisturizer, here becomes an excuse for some of the crowd to visit the bar.

The band rally with a closing run of indie-dancefloor fillers that sends the set out on a high. Teasdale may wonder, “Is it fun? Is this a vibe?” but tonight, the answer is emphatically ‘yes’ to both.