“He don’t get puss he get the boot,” sneers Rhian Teasdale on “Catch These Fists”, the lead single from Wet Leg’s marvellously muscular second album: Moisturizer. Over a beat that springs wonkily - like a three-legged gazelle on a post-punk treadmill – from rubberised bass and a sour candy guitar riff, the frontwoman drawls, snarls and roars as she brushes off a guy bothering her on a night out. “Man down! Ya! Ya!” is how she celebrates his retreat, as the sound fills out around her like the roar of a moshpit.
With writing credits now shared among all five band members, the indie-punk-pop band are still driving their songs with the kind of catchy gonzo hooks that distinguished their 2021 breakthrough “Chaise Longue” (and 2022's double Grammy-winning self-titled debut album). But now they all come at you with a little more consistent, confrontational welly. Founding members Teasdale (who plays rhythm guitar) and Hester Chambers (lead guitar) – who met as teenagers growing up on the Isle of Wight – holed up with male bandmates Henry Holmes, Josh Mobaraki and Ellis Durand at an Airbnb on the Suffolk coast to write the record.
The commitment to the English seaside kept them in touch with the edgy, scuzzy, eerie vibe that saw them referencing the RNLI on their first album. Now it finds them eye-rolling the kind of bloke who drinks Strongbow Dark Fruit Cider. In the daft yet creepy video for “Catch These Fists” the band are shown running down country roads, pouring milk, lighting fags and vomiting like the men from those 118 commercials have found themselves on the set of The Wicker Man.
The album pounds into action with the grinding guitars and sirens of “CPR”. The churning bass line channels Cake’s "Comfort Eagle" while Teasdale gets vulnerable, asking: “Is it love or suicide?” She yelps out the “chills” her lover gives her before building to a climactic confession of “I… I… I…I’m in love!”
She gets more sexually explicit on “Pillow Talk”, where she uses the PG-rated title of the old Doris Day rom-com to admit she’s more like the Golden Age star in the gun-toting role she played in the musical Calamity Jane. “Every night I lick my pillow/ I wish I was licking you,” Every night I f*** my pillow/ I wish I was f***king you.”
There’s sweetness on the shoegazey jangle of “Davina McCall", over which Teasdale croons to her baby angel while Chambers’ guitar reaches for a George Harrison-esque echo-twang of yearning melancholy within the grunge mix. “Dream about us taking holidays together/ We won’t even care if we get s****y weather,” runs the realistic swoon of the lyrics.
An equally floaty lurrrve drives the rattling pace of “Pokemon” and causes the lovely, slo-mo melody of “11:21” to drift deep into the heart. Proggy woodwind lines flutter through the wobbly synths, stoned bass and baggy-pocketed drumming as Teasdale allows her voice to roam sleepily from its lowest to highest registers, finding the contours of her feelings for an absent lover. “I know you like nobody else,” she assures them. Always the band’s extrovert, Teasdale has grown into her power as a frontwoman as the introverted Chambers has retreated from the spotlight. But this tension between the fearless blurt and the anxious confession is what keeps the sparks flying.
It’s wonderful to find that such an original British band is more than a flash in the pan. Far from being burned out (or being bullied into selling out) by the sudden wave of global fame, they’ve doubled down on their own weird energy. Moisturizer's uncanny electricity is off the voltmeter.
