Wet Leg - Moisturizer
★★★★
DOMINO
“Maybe we could start a band/As some kinda joke,” sings Rhian Teasdale on U And Me At Home, the closing track on Wet Leg’s second album. “Well, that didn’t quite go to plan.” Three years after Teasdale and her hair-veiled co-conspirator Hester Chambers released Chaise Longue – less pop song, more invasive indie species – to immediate viral acclaim, Wet Leg are a band transformed. If the depths of their original ambition can be measured by the fact their Grammy-winning debut single was originally stashed away in a folder marked “High Jams”, Moisturizer makes it clear – whether by design or circumstance – those days of whimsical bonnet-wearing insouciance are gone.
The most obvious change is that Wet Leg are now officially a five-piece, the foundation duo of Teasdale and Chambers joined in songwriting and in the studio by the members of their touring band: Joshua Mobaraki (guitar and synths), Henry Holmes (drums) and Ellis Durand (bass). They might have initially been guileless about the realities of a working group when they unexpectedly found themselves thrown into the public eye (“I had no idea what a promo tour was,” Teasdale admits to MOJO) but Moisturizer sees them newly armoured, hard-fired by extensive time on the road and the glare of fame. (Just check out the metal gauntlets and boots Teasdale wore to perform first single Catch These Fists on American TV in April.)
The record’s sleeve, meanwhile, looks like a nightmarish remix of their debut’s tender artwork, a Don’t Look Now reveal where the two girls hugging with their backs to the camera morph into hyper-pop gremlins with evil talons and – in Teasdale’s case at least – a disturbing Chris Cunningham grin. That they appear to be crouching in a very boring hotel room only adds to the sense of disturbing uncanniness. The suggestion is clear: this is a band hatching out into their true form.
Yet behind their early deceptive cottagecore stylings, the signs of subversion were always there (“Is your muffin buttered?” indeed). Their self-titled 2022 debut album featured the bitter kiss-off of Ur Mum (“When I think about what you’ve become/I feel sorry for your mum”) and the withering Wet Dream (“What makes you think that you’re good enough/To think about me when you’re touching yourself?”) but Moisturizer is a record fully aware of its own power. Produced by Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey (Fontaines D.C./Kae Tempest), who also worked on their first album, even its ’90s rock distortions come with a steely shine. Catch These Fists is a pugnacious swing at predatory sleazeballs who can’t leave a group of women dancing together alone, while Mangetout is a relentless attack on a “bottom feeder” that ducks and weaves with the agile spite of Veruca Salt’s Seether or prime Line Up-era Elastica.
If Moisturizer was purely a display of muscle, though, it would quickly pall. Maybe in part as result of the various co-writing permutations opened up by their new five-piece set-up, what unfolds is an emotionally flexible record, one that pinballs between rage and romance, lust and raw vulnerability, a suite of songs where the reality of love is as terrifying as it is blissful. If they show off their defensive capabilities with Mangetout’s wry “You wanna fuck me? I know most people do”, they can also sink into the besotted Kate Bush balladry of 11:21, or the jubilant band singalong of U And Me At Home, a song of post-touring disorientation and reorientation that is too joyful to fall into the ‘moaning about tourbuses’ genre.
Teasdale has spoken about how meeting her current partner and realising she wasn’t straight cut through her prior reticence towards writing “conventional” love songs, and here she doesn’t hold back. There are moments of confusion, bordering on concussion. “999/What’s your emergency?” she gasps over the high-speed blue-light guitars of CPR, channelling both New York Dolls and The Shangri-Las. “Well, the thing is I’m in LOVE.” It’s a loss of control underlined by Liquidize’s seesawing, seasick Breeders pop: “Love struck me down/The fuck am I doing?”
Elsewhere, though, it’s quite clear what’s going on. Pillow Talk’s sticky carnality is one reference to biblical incest away from early Pixies, while Davina McCall uses the Big Brother presenter’s catchphrase – “I’m coming to get you” – as a slogan of undying devotion on a song as soft and sweet as The Cardigans. McCall is not the only striking pop culture reference. Pond Song, Chambers’s glam Tanya Donelly chug, mentions The Princess Bride’s Westley and Buttercup; Jennifer’s Body takes its name from 2009’s demonic Megan Fox horror film (and its tune from 1990s Portland), while the delirious Pokemon is a rush of liquid Fleetwood Mac reminiscent of Julia Jacklin or a down-there-for-dancing Weather Station. By plucking a reference to Shakira or Doritos out of the whirl of chaos around them, you sense a band trying to pin these songs down, connect them to something recognisable, map a solid path through an often destabilising world – whether that’s the effects of love or life on the road.
At first, it might feel as if Moisturizer is the aftermath of a superhero origin myth: this small, soft-bodied Isle Of Wight indie band falling into the music-industry vat and coming out implacable, fierce, with a tough exoskeleton. It’s even possible to accuse Moisturizer of occasionally being – catch these fists – a little on the nose, maybe even a record that risks the faint praise of being tagged a smart, cohesive collection of songs that would sound undeniably great soundtracking any windows-down road trip or day-into-night summer gathering. Yet it’s a stranger, suppler album than that would suggest, the quietly subversive core that made Wet Leg such an alluring prospect in the first place still intact. Cynics might have been doubtful there would ever be a first Wet Leg album, let alone a second: Moisturizer shows, decisively, that while the metal gauntlets might be very much on, creatively, Wet Leg’s gloves are off.
Moisturizer is out July 11 on Domino.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
Track List:
CPR
Liquidize
Catch These Fists
Davina Mccall
Jennifer's Body
Mangetout
Pond Song
Pokemon
Pillow Talk
Don’t Speak
11:21
U And Me At Home