Wet Leg’s Second Soak: Wiser, Warmer, Still Wicked
- Bernard Zuel
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
WET LEG
Moisturizer (Domino)
CALM. STAY CALM. It would be wise if I did not rise to the bait, succumb to the blatant provocation in this album. In this album title. For now, we’ll let slide the fact a band from the Isle of Wight – that would be British then – have spelt moisturiser with a z. Pause. Breathe. Moving on.
There is enough provocation in Wet Leg to be going on with anyway, beginning with the fact that after a massively successful single that had quirky-summer-hit written all over it (Chaise Longue) and a follow-up that was almost as successful and built along similar lines (Wet Dream), instead of dribbling away like a fun novelty, they made a debut album that was flawed but not without a couple of more winners. All those lining up to pile on songwriters/frontwomen Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers had to bide their time until the inevitable letdown of album number two that surely would repeat their tropes, with diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, audiences and musicians like louche pop boy and touring partner, Harry Styles, succumbed to guitar-with drums songs that jerked more than danced, probed and pricked more than punched – like postpunk imbibed through a long pop straw – while working on droll down-marking of folks more assured than justified, wry descriptions of themselves in not flattering circumstances, and a line in romance that never really strayed far from sceptical from a distance, even when, or especially when, nominally about sex.
Provocatively, Moisturizer (sigh) expands rather than contracts. Teasdale and Chambers have added touring bandmates, bass player Ellis Durand and guitarist Joshua Mobarak, to the songwriting pool, and with drummer Henry Holmes, to the official lineup (though Teasdale is definitely the dominant presence); cynicism is pushed aside by tenderness and warmth at times (Davina McCall is genuinely and unashamedly sweet); sometimes pop doesn’t need a counteracting agent to exist (Don’t Speak is a mix of ‘90s dream pop and Sabrina Carpenter buzz, with almost plush voices); and tempo and vocals can stretch (in the slow curl strokes of 11:21, Teasdale fashions her voice deeper and more languid).
These are smarter songs, not least because they aren’t trying to pretend that they are not smarter – it has been four years since that self titled debut after all – but the growth feels organic rather than affected. And someone is loving life, which doesn’t suck either.
For those wanting more of the same, songs like Catch These Fists (jagged little six string pills over Franz Ferdinand-like military dance beats), Jennifer’s Body (space-chime guitars for that Robert Smith effect) and CPR (squelched synths smacked by glammed-up guitars) tap into what they did first time around, down to Teasdale’s dry as dust delivery. But the trick is in both the fuller sound and the broader experience: CPR finds her making a 999 call for urgent assistance, but what is her emergency? “I’m …I’m … I’m … in love”; in Jennifer’s Body it is sonic layers rather than sharp objects that hook you.
If there is a trade-off in this it might be that there isn’t anything as ear/eye-catching as those first singles, nothing that blows away cobwebs in the same way. But this is a more consistent high standard of material that suggests they might be sticking around, and if they do, should get better still. Maybe even with their spelling.
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