Pen-Slinger: 2025

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Diagonal Days - 137

Diagonal Days: The comic strip based on the character of the Diagonal Lane novels

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Wet Leg - Festival de Beauregard

At last! I finally got to see Wet Leg LIVE!! After three years of obsessing about them, playing their debut album over and over, and watching them nearly every day on You Tube, I got the full, true Wet Leg Experience.

Last week, they played at the Festival de Beauregard, not far from where we were having our annual beach holiday on the Normandy coast (check out my last post ). Naturally I hopped on the bus and went to see them.

The Festival the Beauregard happens on the outskirt of the city of Caen, on the grounds of Chateau de Beauregard. Here is a shot of the main stage with the château on the side:

Naturally I went in early and made sure I was right on the front row, in the corner between the main stage and the walkway, where the lead singer can prance about. A couple of not-so-bad performances by Servo and King Hannah.

Then there was a performances by Jyeuhair on the second stage, which I decided to skip in order to safeguard my position at the main stage. A lot of people were waiting for the performance by Fontaines DC right after Wet Leg, and leaving my position would have been fatal. Anyway, as far as I could make out, Jyeuhair is some kind of rap act, and that doesn't interest me one bit.

After Jyeuhait there was a performance by a new French group called The Limiñanas on the main stage, which wasn't bad at all...

But they had done just one song, when disaster struck. It had been raining the night before, and the canvas roofing of the stage had turned into a kind of pond. A brisk wind, and the whole thing poured down, drenching the artists, the instruments, and us poor slobs in the front row:

The Limiñanas show was abandoned, and the stage hands got busy mopping up the stage and equipment. The Wet Leg show was brought forward. At Last, I would get to see Rhian and Hester and the gang!! My heart beat faster.

And then, there the were!!!!

It was so painful to see them, after having waited so long, I cried. I swear I cried.

I was torn between wanting to record the performance on my mobile for future recollection, and being in the moment and enjoying it with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul. The heart won. It was impossible to tear my eyes off Rhian to flick the camera app. The best I could manage were these two 15-second shots, the only two times in the entire one hour show that the music slowed down.

Here is the first one, the opening stanza of Too Late Now, which, as you know, start with a slow, sentimental lament, before it booms into hard drive. The moment it boomed, off went the camera!

Here is the second one, where Rhian is singing one of their new songs, which is unusually slow (I believe it is Pillow Talk). Here she is, strutting about on the walkway. As I mentioned above, I was in the corner of the walkway and the stage, getting the best of both!

Luckily for me, a couple of other dudes have posted complete songs from this performance on YouTube. Here they are:

And then it was over....

I can't remember all the songs they played. It went by in a magical blur. But I guess it was the more or less the same set they are playing at all the festivals now:

Catch these fists
Being in Love
Wet Dream
Supermarket
Angelica
Pillow Talk
Oh No
Ur Mum
Chaise Longue
CPR

Was it all I had imagined? It was more. It was WAY, WAY more.

I have been hearing for the past three years that seeing Wet Leg live is an unforgettable experience, and I realized for myself the truth of it. I must have seen over two hundred of their concert performances on YouTube, many of them several times, especially when I was working on my blog post, Wet Leg, The Early Years

But nothing could have prepared me for the physical experience of standing a few feet from them while they made music.

For one, Rhian has a charisma and physical presence that simply cannot be captured on camera. She is magnetic. It is impossible to take your eyes off her. Second, the raw sound they produce live can't be recorded adequately. It makes the pulses pound like any heavy metal act, but at the same time it has this beguiling, sensitive, ever-changing quality that very few modern bands can match, certainly not heavy metal acts. Maybe Led Zep were like that at their peak. I don't know. I was a little kid at the time.

What about Rhian's infamous "new look"? I complained about it in my last Wet Leg post. Rhian and Hester became famous for the dowdy, rustic flowing robes, cheeky grins, clowning about on stage - a stark contrast to the exciting music they played. It made them seem so charming and whimsical, so REAL.

Now all that has changed, as I mentioned in my last post. Rhian has gone full punk rocker: sexy clothes, scowls, aggressive attitude, acrobatic moves on stage. Hester, meanwhile, having an anxiety attack, has retreated into the background, leaving Rhian the sole frontwoman. Wet Leg fans were aghast, me included.

But... here is the thing... IT WORKS! By GOLLY it works! See Wet Leg live, and you realize it is PERFECT! It goes perfectly with their new music. For some reason it looks a bit disconcerting in photos and videos, but seen in person, from the front row of the stage, Rhian's new persona is madly exciting.

And just in case you still miss the old, cutesy Rhian, she's there too. She puts in an appearance between songs, when Rhian smiles and shyly asks the audience if they liked the song. That is actually the most fascinating aspect of the live performance: seeing Rhian transform back and forth between Girl-Next-Door and Rock-Goddess, not once, but several times in the course of the evening.

So you can rest assured, our Rhian hasn't changed, she's still the same good-natured, humorous person we knew. This new attitude is just a carefully constructed persona that she invokes for the duration of the song.

And as for Hester, she seems to be getting her confidence back. When I saw them, Hester faced the audience for most of the concert, and even smiled a couple of times. She did not play with her back turned to the stage, as she did in the first few outings after their big break.

Anyhow, the concert was over as abruptly as it had started, and I staggered off to get a beer and pee, something that I had been holding in the past hours. The toilet and lager seemed more attractive than Fontaines DC, at that point.

I did stick around to watch the performances that followed - after all, it was included in the price of the entry ticket: Amyl and The Sniffers, Fontaines DC, Clara Luciani, Martin Garrix.

But it was all a blur.

I could only think about Rhian and Hester and relive their show again and again in my head.

Here is a pic of the French singer Clara Luciani, whom all the French kids seem to be gaga about. She wasn't so bad.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Mont Saint-Michel 360 deg.

Last week we took our annual beach holiday on the Normandy coast with our grandchildren, to get away from the sweltering heat of Lyon. This time, we took a cottage further down the coast, instead of in the vicinity of Honfleur, which we usually do. The sleepy village which got to experience the full blast of our three granddaughters throwing tantrums and generally raising hell was Dragey-Ronthon. Poor perishers.

Dragey-Ronthon is in the Bay of Saint-Michel, just 16km as the crow flies from the celebrated island-abbey of Saint-Michel, the second biggest tourist attraction in France after Eiffel Tower.

Blandine found us this lovely Norman cottage, which we hired for the week...

Here we all are, our first look at the beach, a short drive from the cottage. It is cloudy and a cool wind is blowing, a refreshing change from the baking 32C back home.

Here is our first look at Mont Saint-Michel, across the bay.

Mont Saint-Michel, as you might know, is a 9th Century Abbey on a semi-island that gets completely cut off from the mainland at high tide, but can be accessed by a pathway at low tide. We did drive down to Mont Saint-Michel one day, obviously. But we did not enter the walls of the abbey. We had already toured it extensively a few years ago, when I first came to France, and the thought of entering again those narrow, claustrophobic lanes bursting at the seams with tourists was enough to quail the stoutest heart.

Instead, we did something we hadn't done the first time. We joined a guided tour of the mudflats surrounding the abbey at low tide. You need a guide as the mudflats are full of sinkholes and you can quickly get trapped if the tide comes in too quickly.

Here are the photos I took of Mont Saint-Michel from all directions during our tour. Barefoot, I might add, toes squishing in the gooey, slimy mud!

First, here is a shot of Mont Saint-Michel across a meadow with haystacks while we were driving there.

Here are shots from various angles, during our walk around the abbey.

A little hillock from across Mont Saint-Michel, that has a romantic legend associated with it. It is supposed to be the grave of a princess who committed suicide in the bay when she got news of the death of her beau in a battle sometime during the 100 Years War between the French and the English.

Here is a shot from the garden of a farm not far from our cottage, where you can enjoy the most delicious farm-made ice cream while admiring Mont-Saint-Michel and the bay. By the way, if you are in this region, don't forget to check out this farm. It's some of the best ice cream I have ever had, outside of Italy. It's called "Sol Roc glace de la ferme"

Here is the Google maps link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/tZ4m1XTRzykWCos38

Another couple of shots from the beach near our cottage, at low tide.

Sunday, July 06, 2025

Diagonal Days - 136

Diagonal Days: The comic strip based on the character of the Diagonal Lane novels

Monday, June 30, 2025

Wet Leg V2.0

The biggest, baddest news item of 2025.

In an era when not one, but THREE nuclear wars may break out at any time at three different points on the globe, the climate is going down the chute, and grumpy old men have taken over this planet, there is one little piece of info we can all smile about: WET LEG ARE BACK!!!!

You are underwhelmed. Who, or what, is Wet Leg, you ask? If they are back, it presupposes they went away. Did they?

Let me take your questions one by one:

What is Wet Leg?

Wet Leg is simply the greatest rock band since Nirvana. The first rock band the 21^st Century has thrown up, that can go chin-to-chin with the iconic bands of the 60s and 70s. Check out my series of posts on Wet Leg

Did they go away?

Yes, sadly. Shortly after their 2023 Grammy for a pathbreaking first album...

... they did a concert in Rio where they made a mysterious announcement about it being their last concert for a while... (check out the Rio concert of 2023, where Rhian and Hester shock the audience with tearful goodbyes. Skip to 43:40 in the video, just after Angelica and before the closing song, Chaise Long)

....and they disappeared from public view. They bobbed up only to collect another Grammy in 2024 ...this time for a remix of Depeche Mode’s Wagging Tongue ...

... and a few odd concerts in UK that were pre-scheduled, but other than that, they maintained complete radio silence. No Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TV interviews – nothing.

We fans were distraught. Have they broken up, we wailed? Has something happened to them? We posted message after message on their Instagram and Facebook accounts, without a response. This went on almost two years.

And then, glory be! Just as suddenly as they had disappeared, they were back, with a bang! New songs, new album, new sound, new look! In short: Wet Leg V2.0!

Here they are, doing two of their new songs on 3VOOR12. The 3VOOR12 sound and camerawork outstanding, as always, as I have mentioned in previous Wet Leg posts.

Here are the same two songs, Catch These Fists and CPR, on Jools Holland:

Here is a complete recent concert, in Porto:

This is the artwork for their new album, which will be officially released on July 11. They have been performing live only a handful of the new songs until now. So, lots more new songs coming up soon!

Cover Art of Wet Leg’s new Album: Moisturizer – coming out JULY 11!!!

Here is a recent interview in Crack Magazine, where Rhian talks about their big break from touring, and the new direction that they have taken.

https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/wet-leg-cover-story-interview/

Another nice interview in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/apr/04/this-weird-dream-just-keeps-going-wet-leg-on-overnight-success-sexual-epiphanies-and-facing-fears

It seems the band had taken a beach house in Southwold, Suffolk, and holed up there for six months, to work on their new album without the distractions of constant touring. In the meantime, Rhian had found love again (we fans are so happy for her). So, most of the songs on the album are supposedly love songs, and not the bad-boyfriend songs that the first album was full of. Although, if CPR is anything to go by, Rhian has her own unique take on the love song!

Going by the few new songs that have been released to date, their new sound is darker, more aggressive. Much of the flippant humor that made their first album so endearing has gone. The clever wordplay and the zany outlook on life is still intact, though.

About the new look, I’m not so sure. Rhian and Hester’s infectious smiles, their playful goofing-about on stage and their adorable, girls-next-door look was such a large part of the Wet Leg charm. Now Hester has taken to facing the back of the stage throughout the concert and never appears in person for interview or faces the camera. She had tried to overcome her social anxieties the first time around, but has now decided to take a step back. It’s so sad. Maybe she’ll find the strength to overcome her anxieties again. We’re with you, Hester!

Rhian has been working out and now appears on stage flexing her muscles and scowling. She has bleached her eyebrows and taken to wearing aggressive new costumes. I dunno. I guess this is her way of coping with unwanted attention from the Romeos and Lotharios who no doubt used to badger her in the past (which the song Catch These Fists seems to suggest), but one can’t deny it’s somewhat jarring for us old fans. Oh well, I guess we’ll get used to it, eventually. Actually, if you watch the concert footage carefully, you can see the old Rhian slipping out from time to time. This new look seems to be some kind of protective mask. Maybe she’ll go back to being the old Rhian we used to adore one day.

If you have never seen Wet Leg V1.0, here is one of their finest moments, at La Route du Rock, Saint-Malo 2022. They never looked prettier, they were never funnier, and their sound was never so exciting, as on this glorious summer day in France:

But I guess they couldn't go on being like that forever. That was a particular point in time, at a very early stage in their fame. A time of innocence. They've moved on, and we fans had better move with them, instead of pining for what was.

Anyway, the good news for us Frenchies: Wet Leg are coming to France not once, but THRICE this year!!! I’ve got the tickets to their Caen and Lyon concerts, and I am counting the days….