Lady Legs (2014-present) is a 4-piece surf/garage rock band from Birmingham… Read Full Bio ↴Lady Legs (2014-present) is a 4-piece surf/garage rock band from Birmingham, Alabama, United States. The band consists of John Sims, Grant Galtney, Seth Brown, and Ellis Bernstein. The band is signed to Communicating Vessels Records in Birmingham, AL, Lady Legs have been writing wonderfully off-kilter poppy garage rock since their formation in 2012. In the five years since then, they’ve gone from playing college house parties to filling rooms at some of Birmingham’s most esteemed venues and creating significant buzz at last year’s South By Southwest. Lady Legs’ superlative debut album Holy Heatwave was recorded in Birmingham at Communicating Vessels’ own studio and consists of 11 bright, jagged songs which embrace a similar spirit to the likes of Twin Peaks and Mac DeMarco, while taking inspiration from the band’s shared love of The Strokes, Rolling Stones, Pixies and Real Estate. Lyrically, Holy Heatwave covers a gamut of subjects from romance to technology’s grip on society’s attention spans. ‘Real Thing’, the first song revealed from the record, is an excitable ode to “finding someone who you really connect with and who you’re really excited to be with”that’s driven by helter-skelter guitar riffs and bursts of drums that sound like they’ve been lifted from a ’60s girl group record. ‘Out Like A Light’, meanwhile, begins as tropically tinged indie rock, slowly morphing into something more searing by its fiery end. “I don’t need your confusion/Your religion or your institution/Keep it at home,” sings John in the chorus. “It’s the younger generation of America talking to the older generation about upholding tradition and religion, and asking, ‘Why do you think that way? You never really told me,’” he says. “It’s about the frustrations that come along with that and wanting to change things.” While recording live doesn’t leave much room for experimentation, the band still found space to push their boundaries. The fittingly titled ‘French Beach Music’ saw Grant take over vocal duties with the help of an unconventional instrument. “He didn’t even sing into a microphone,” says John. “He just sang into a talkbox that we found in the studio. I got to play pedal steel on that track too.”
The music, combined with Sims’s playful lyrics about love and the munchies, makes Lady Legs seem fun and carefree – but behind that fun and carefree exterior is a sort of magic, a musical tightness forged by four friends.