Legss and the perception of home

Take a listen to "The Landlord", specifically from 2 minutes and 19 seconds in and you’ll find what follows is a giant inhale of relief: “you catch up with a bus but on either side there is no pavement. / The bus slows, the engine’s still running; / the sunset on your neck; the fumes in your throat; time is running out; this is how it feels.” In a perceptive monologue, vocalist Ned Green steps below the lacquer of city life – filled with mysteriously bejewelled portable toilets and tight, polite rictus grins, something menacing lies underneath. We’re sat metres away from the grave of Joseph Grimaldi, the man often referenced as the father of modern-day clowns. Welcome to the world of Fester.

Post-punk is an overcrowded game these days, and it’s easy to slot any new band into the bored category of ‘mid-20-somethings moan about the state of the world.’ In the case of Legss, this isn’t entirely inaccurate, and they are more than happy to poke fun at the suggestion. The title track of their 2020 sophomore EP Doomswayers is a relentless polemic that clocked in at nearly six minutes. A play on the term ‘doomsayer’, the band took ownership of the definition in an accompanying music video: “oh look, it’s that stale boy band Legss again. What a scatty lot of doomswayers!”

Then, looking further into the trenches of 2019, you’ll find the hidden gem ‘Graduate Scheme’ on their debut EP Writhing Comedy. Soundscapes of industrial clatters and dystopian booms soundtrack a rambling passage from frontman Ned Green, as his performance straddles the worlds of Sprechgesang and spoken word, with scenery seemingly plucked from the more insufferable kinds of London media moguls. It's this sheer ambition and detailed cultural satire which earned the band a surprising early supporter in the form of The 1975’s Matty Healy.

To understand their philosophy however, it makes more sense to look outside of the band. Legss is formed like a ball of Play-Doh, stamping stray members from other bands to shape its core. Guitarist Max Oliver does double duties with fellow post-punkers Hotel Lux. Louis Grace, drummer and producer, lends his talents to South London collective Nukuluk, an impressive five-piece that dabbles in a multitude of genres spanning hip hop, rap metal and glitch to everything but post-punk, and bassist Jake Martin works on an industrial site, making absurd and whimsical objects in his spare time.

More than happy to list his obscure creations, he reels off a table that can hold exactly one pint glass, hand-shaped table tennis rackets that are completely legal. “I love making weird stuff,” he grins, “I love looking at our relationships with things and manipulating that. Sometimes just tweaking something – the dye, the scale of it, the material – it can make you re-evaluate your relationship with these objects in day-to-day life.”

Stepping in to agree, Green nods: “that’s what a lot of our art practices are about outside of music.” He’s the vocalist and guitarist who works at a literary agency by day and runs the experimental underground imprint Toothgrinder Press with his brother William in his spare time, frequently appearing as a poet.

“My main medium would be designing books,” he continues. “The first thing I try to think about is: how can I change this object? How can I make this book feel more unfamiliar? That’s the process that we’re always thinking about.” For Green, this means placing a comical splatter of birdshit on the front cover of ‘Dog Replica’, the poetry collection of Opus Kink’s Angus Rogers.

It’s easy to see why the band got signed to The state51 Conspiracy, an independent label that boasts an atelier that draws on their artists’ backgrounds in bookbinding to create bespoke vinyl reissues. Whilst those expensive covers are out of the question for Legss’ budget at hand, it’s certainly a prospect that entices the ambitions of the band. “Part of the reason we did go with them is because of the resources they’ve got, the ethos that they’ve built, absolutely everything could be in line with the ideas we do have,” explains Oliver. “Hopefully we’ll lean into that in the future.”

For now, new EP Fester looks set to mark a step forward for the world of Legss, where they’re challenging themselves to create a more diverse sonic palette of uncanny London. “People think our aesthetic is angsty which isn’t wrong,” Grace offers, “but we’re trying to show a part of ourselves that we’ve never shown before. It’s a lot more vulnerable… we’re just figuring out how to write music that your mum can actually listen to,” he jokes.

Given three of the band members are London natives, it seems they should know all about the challenges of living in the city. Grace describes it as “inorganic” and “processed”, yet also acknowledges that London is a hub of exciting cultural activity, for better or for worse. “It’s a difficult place to live; you don’t feel supported politically, the rent’s incredibly expensive, the cost of living in general – all the usual stuff. But at the same time, there’s a massive art scene going on and you get tied down. I feel like we couldn’t go anywhere else and we’re really excited where we are because we’re making something true and personal to us, but at the same time it’s a difficult place to live. But you and your friends all share that same feeling, you kind of bask in that and create.”

“I’ve only ever romanticised it, even when we’re trying to paint a dark picture,” adds Green. “The fact we’re trying to turn it into something worthy of ridicule is a romanticised view of London. He’s the odd one out, born in Liverpool and having grown up in the Wirral: “It has quite a rich cultural history, but I found it quite inaccessible at the time. Hearing my parents stories about going there when they were younger, they found it the most freeing and friendly place. I don’t want to shit on Liverpool, because it is a wicked city.”

The boys often cycle around London, picking up on conversations and bringing them back to turn them into character portraits, but don’t be tempted to read too deep. “The Landlord” is not actually the scathing critique of London’s rental market you’d expect, but simply titled after the beers they drink. “It’s more of an emblem of a character – the landlord as oppressor and how it makes it tricky moving into other places.”

Green’s diatribes have taken somewhat of a backseat on Fester; instead, his poetic roots come to the forefront in these character studies, mostly delivered in his sprechgesang style. It’s the buzzword to describe the speak-singing that’s captured post-punk: you hear it in the insecure quiver of Isaac Wood-era BCNR, or the disillusioned sigh of Florence Shaw from Dry Cleaning. Tonight at their headline show at the Lexington, Green displays his diverse talents as a vocalist. He’ll approach the words with careful, almost intimate enunciation; other times, he’ll rant and rave, pacing madly across the stage.

“People are attracted to it because it’s a really evocative, potent delivery style,” he explains. “You really get a sense of personality from a vocalist when they’re speaking rather than singing. And, if one band popularises it, naturally people will try to give it a go themselves – which is great. But there are some very, very bad cases of it. You can’t just talk over the song.”

He theorises that the living conditions of the post-Brexit atmosphere mirrors the turmoil of the 80s, where the post-punk boom first started. It’s why there’s been such a huge resurgence: “We’re not a political band in that sense, but that feeling makes people want to go, ‘well I’ve got to fucking say this’.”

Right now, the band are tied down in a tough city with limited money, trying to challenge themselves musically with every EP. But if they had no limitations, what album would they make? “We’d want to do something really ambitious”, says Green. “At heart, we are quite a pretentious band. We unashamedly like to make big statements so… we’d want a double album.” It’s at this point where chaos breaks out as everyone pitches in with their ideas. “It’s got skits in it” Grace interrupts, with quips of “it’s got like, five genres on it”, “with 70% really posh jokes” and “then 30% bangers,” all overlapping before the boys burst into laughter.

Before we’re due to depart, the group wander over to dance on Joseph Grimaldi’s grave, as is encouraged by tradition. It’s a slight exaggeration, with the actual grave tucked behind a fence, but the park sports two caskets for this purpose. Stepping on them, the bells underneath are supposed to play Grimaldi’s best known song, “Hot Codlins”, yet nowadays you’ll be lucky to hear a dull ‘CLINK’ if you jump on the tiles. For a clown, Grimaldi’s life turned out to be rather depressing – retired with joint problems due to the intense physicality of his routines, a heavy drinker, and riddled with debt, he died at 59 years of age. As the group dances, I can only imagine he’s rolling in his grave – but hopefully, this time, with laughter.