Unreal: Legss Live in Edinburgh
The London art-rock outfit blurred the line between chaos and control at their sold-out Edinburgh show.
Photo: Jacob Ray
Legss’ debut album Unreal is a world built on contradictions – its beauty stitched with tension, chaos held together by precision. Across spiralling movements, the London art-rock outfit stretches the boundaries of what guitar music can feel like, blurring the line between the real and the unreal, collapse and control. Now on the road, that vision takes on a new form as Legss translate the album’s psychological pull into something tangible, volatile, and alive.
By the time the lights dim inside Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s, the air is humid and heavy with anticipation, and with no grand entrance or fuss, Legss take to the stage. Despite closing the album, Fugue opens the show in a seamless loop that erases any remaining sense of beginning or end. Its swirling motif reawakens the ghost of the record, drawing both audience and band back into its strange, suspended world.
At whiplash speed, that stillness ruptures. Sleepers, Awake bursts forward in a controlled explosion, its restless momentum impossible to resist. It’s here that the night takes flight – each song stretching, mutating and breathing in real time, as if never quite played the same way twice.
See No Evil offers a momentary calm before the taut and disciplined Landlord showcases the band’s uncanny synchronicity – no posturing, no filler, just sharp musical command. Then, as Bit Rot kicks in, Ned Green (vocals/guitar) and Max Oliver (guitarist) become beautifully unhinged – their erratic playing teetering on the edge of chaos without ever losing control. As always, Jake Martin’s propulsive bass anchors the storm, his steady, magnetic pulse tethering the noise with near-hypnotic precision.
Broadcast and American Flowers arrive with the confidence of a band fully in their stride – both glowing with the album’s familiar textures, only dirtier, rawer and more urgent – before Legss reach their full potential on Eversince. Shimmering with emotional depth as drummer Louis Grace takes on vocals, the song unfolds with unexpected tenderness. It’s rich guitars swelling with warmth and ache, revealing a softer undercurrent beneath the chaos.
By the time 909 closes the set, what is fierce on record becomes feral in person – an earth-shattering wall of sound that seems to shake the air until nothing but ear-ringing resonance remains.
Legss don’t just perform Unreal; they breathe new life into it. They let the album’s distortion, tension and emotional unease spill over into something raw and unpredictable. Far more than just your average guitar band, the London quartet are architects of atmosphere, bending sound, silence and space until the familiar feels strange again. And it’s in that strangeness that you can’t help but grin, caught in the rush of it all and reminded what it feels like to be utterly alive.