HYLI Vol. LXXII - Wet Leg and Clutch
Patrick sends Andy one of the biggest debut full-lengths from last year and Andy sends Patrick some Jack Daniels Commercial-core riff rock that isn't metal at all
Hello, thank you for coming for another week of Hope You Like It. After over a decade, my beloved Twitter account was killed by Elon Musk, personally, because I tweeted a screenshot of the popular cult-ish Netflix show I Think You Should Leave with a quote from the show, which was considered a threat of serious harm. Nazis and people constantly bugging trans people for no damn reason are allowed free reign on that site but I got my ass kicked to the curb for quoting an admittedly stupid TV show. I made a new one but it feels a bit like jumping back on the Titanic after it already hit the iceberg. It’s a bit of a bummer to lose touch overnight with some people I’ve talked to for years but never thought to seek out other ways to stay in touch lol. Whatever, someone has to promote this newsletter and no one else is going to do it. What else. I’m still locked out of every piece of software I use at work on a daily basis since coming back from parental leave a week and a half ago but I am now able to park and turn my computer on unencumbered. Progress! I am in the process of trying to force somebody to allow me to pay them hundreds of dollars a week to watch my child but no one seems to want the money. Bogus. I’m in a funk, I’ll be back next week. Hope You Like It.
Wet Leg - Wet Leg
Patrick: I have a little Notes app note where I save a list of albums for Andy for weeks when I’m feeling particularly uninspired and can’t pull anything off the top of the dome without assistance. This week was one of those weeks. Wet Leg’s self-titled debut kinda blew up last year despite the band not really having much of anything else to their name and, guess fucking what, I loved the record. Well. Love is a bit strong. I Strongly Liked the record.
“Chaise Longue” was a massive fucking tune, honestly, perhaps too massive. Just hearing it every time I went to the bottle shop or to grab a Golden Milk (Andy: what is this…) (Patrick: thank you so much for asking, it’s basically a tea that’s heavy in turmeric and then turned into a latte type with your milk of choice, it’s good for your immune system and tastes good as well). Oversaturation is a real thing and that single bordered on it. Luckily, the chorus is a, frankly, sick hook and it kept me coming back time and time and time again even if I would then follow that with weeks at a time where I didn’t want to hear the song at all. The same applies to “Wet Dream,” which is imo the best song on the record. This band just loves to make a song where the chorus is one phrase said a trillion times in a row. That rocks. I’m good with it. The band gets associated with the recent crop of post-punk British bands but that’s kinda insane to me. Wet Leg, very clearly to me, just seems like a pop band? These are billion-dollar massive hooks, plain and simple. Wet Leg is much closer to Haim, in my brain, than Dry Cleaning (Andy: ah yes… dry cleaning). “I Don’t Wanna Go Out” and “Loving You” especially, feel like tracks that could have been off Women in Music Pt. III if those Women came from the Isle of Wight instead of Silver Lake.
There’s some cool instrumentation going on too. “Oh No” has some filthy-sounding fuzz riffs going on. “Piece of Shit” has a lead line in the chorus that almost feels like Pavement, if you make your ears squint. “Too Late Now” feels like shoegaze gone punk. Do I think this will make Andy like the record? Probably not, but he needs to respect women more (Andy: wow what are you talking about here please be careful) and have fun for the first time in his miserable life (Andy: no), so that’s on him. Hope You Like It!
Andy: I know metal has some awful band names but what does Wet Leg mean? What am I supposed to feel when I hear that name? I just picture someone who has pissed down their jeans and, as a result, has a leg that is wet (Patrick: this is a family newsletter, clean it up dude).
That aside, the music doesn’t really sound like someone pissed down their leg. It is a lot better than that. This was some pretty fun indie-pop-rock-whatever-core. I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece or knocked me on my ass or anything but it was fun music. The whole album is filled with riffs and hooks that you can't help but jam to. I could go on a whole spiel about how some of the filler tracks on the album don't quite hit the fun vibes of the lead singles, but honestly, there's always some catchy rhythm or melody that keeps it from going stale (Patrick: hell yes).
Lyrics are weird enough to not be boring and the vocals are unique enough to seem authentic. I don’t always vibe with the half-spoken-word, half-breathy singing but it really worked for me on this record. I don’t really have much room to complain here. I enjoyed all of it. Lines like “Is your muffin buttered?/Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?” leave me perplexed in a good way (Patrick: extremely Andy-coded). They are very clearly pop-inspired but do enough with the instrumentation that the album has a little edge to it. I don’t know anything about the world of this music but I kinda feel like indie-pop people could be annoyed that they’re not trying to be more serious and just taking the piss? Most of these songs are just Pretty Dang Fun! Sorry!
Thanks for this. I had fun with it. I Liked It (Patrick: can’t wait to send Andy on a post-punk journey yay get ready for Dry Cleaning).
Clutch - From Beale Street to Oblivion
Andy: Clutch is another band I discovered during my brief time with Headbangers Ball on MTV2. Really a monumental program that had a quick but lasting impact on me as a teen. For some reason, the episodes from 2007-2008ish have just been lost to the annals of the internet (Patrick: much like the Twitter account @ expert frowner). I cannot seem to find them anywhere. I know my wife and I would love to re-watch one just for the nostalgia factor.
“Electric Worry” was the music video on Headbangers Ball rotation. What a great song. What a great music video man. Not to launch into a whole dissertation about the components of a good music video versus a bad one, but really, don’t we all want to just see people performing and having a great time? I don’t need a built-in visual story or whatever. Neil Fallon gets hot and takes off his jacket… that is the extent of stuff in the music video that isn’t just them rocking out. With all that, “Electric Worry” is also a banger of a song. *Stefon Voice* This song has it all: an electric harmonica, one part cover song, one part original, guitar and drum solos. Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead told Neil Fallon that the song was Clutch’s “Ace of Spades” (Patrick: that’s sick lol). Safe to say it is a good song!
This album just screamed Patrick to me. Blues-inspired (is Patrick like…a huge blues guy? I wouldn’t be surprised) rock and roll where guys love guitar and love doing shit (Patrick: I do, perhaps predictably, own the complete Robert Johnson recordings on vinyl, to answer your question). The whole album is fun. Bluesy, heavy, and kick-ass. “White's Ferry” and “When Vegans Attack” are standout tracks. Riffs on Riffs here.
It is just fun, bluesy rock and roll. I mean, it’s probably not “metal” but I won’t let the man keep me down and I will do what I want. Hope You Like It!
Patrick: So, like, I’m a little confused. The premise of this newsletter is that Andy, a metalhead, sends me metal records I’ve never heard and I, a non-metalhead, send him non-metal he doesn’t know. Occasionally, we choose to flip the script and I’ll send him a metal record and he’ll send me a non-metal one. Last week was one of those weeks, in fact. He sent me an acoustic flamenco record with no vocals that I kinda liked! He could have sent me this record. This is not metal lol. This is Jack Daniels Commercial-core Riff Rock. This is like Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know” on psychedelics. This is like the midway point of Kyuss and recent Queens of the Stone Age, which is strangely not at all middle-period Queens of the Stone Age. This is for people that seem like they have big thoughts on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Does any of that matter? Probably not. Did I like this record? Yeah, I think. Does this rock? Fully. There are tons of riffs here. Lots of guitars. Andy texted me the song “Fred’s Worried Life Blues” by Mississippi Fred McDowell because it’s “covered” in “Electric Worry,” as if I didn’t already know that fucking song since I was like 15 years old. Did you know it is also a partial cover of Muddy Waters’ “Trouble No More?” Did you (Andy: I did) ??? While I don’t really play Blues Rock because I like to listen to Dinosaur Jr., I did learn how to play the guitar by listening to all those dudes. “Electric Worry” was also a song I already knew, albeit the only one I already knew off of From Beale Street to Oblivion, because it was in the commercial for the video game Left 4 Dead 2 (Andy: wow GOAT game) and I want to say some movie that I can’t remember? I feel like I know the hook “Bang bang bang bang … vamanos vamanos” like I know the name of my own father. I asked my wife if she knew the song without playing it by doing an impression of the guy and she responded that a) I sounded like the Cookie Monster and b) yes, she did know it.
I didn’t know any of the other songs here but they rocked. People have told me for years that this band is secretly (to me) massive and that I’d love them but I didn’t fucking listen to them because they’re not my dude Andy. They, and he, were right though. “White’s Ferry” has a pretty cool guitar intro where they slow it down a bit. “Rapture of Riddley Walker” kinda feels like a Rival Sons song that doesn’t absolutely suck shit and make me want to stop listening to music forever. “Black Umbrella” has a killer groove. A lot of this seems like “dad rock” more to me than, like, Wilco because this feels like stuff my dad would L O V E. I merely Enjoy It a good amount. Dude’s vocals are kinda corny but in an endearing way (Andy: that’s my vibe), I think. I will definitely check out more but please for the love of god respect our brand and submit metal for 51 weeks of the year and submit non-metal, like this, for the non-metal weeks. Thanks!