“I… I… I… I… I… I’M IN LOVE!” If Wet Leg’s debut album was about dealing with social anxiety and early-onset midlife crisis via detached irony and withering put-downs, their second album finds Rhian Teasdale head over heels. “I melt for you,” she sings later, “I liquidize.”
That all-caps exclamation comes in the opening track, “cpr,” with Rhian in shock, over the moon, in a state of emergency. While sincere — and often very lusty — Teasdale frames these declarations of love, which are all over moisturizer, as Wet Leg songs: full of witty turns of phrase, pop culture references, and overflowing hooks. (She’s also sent the prairie dresses to the thrift shop and adopted a new look that’s more gym-ready, but the band’s charm hasn’t changed or dwindled.) “I took a breath, jumped off the cliff because you told me to,” she sings in that signature breathy sprechgesang. “Is it love or suicide?” Then comes the crunchy riff — a close cousin to Viagra Boys’ “Man Made of Meat” — and the shouted, infectious chorus: “Put your mouth to mine, give me CPR!”
The thematic pivot helps avoid the sophomore slump — a very real danger for Wet Leg, whose debut single, “Chaise Longue,” caused a tidal wave of hype in 2021 that flooded into 2022, reminiscent of the mid-’00s days of Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party. It’s a lot to live up to. But Teasdale, co-founder Hester Chambers, and the rest of the band took time to decompress from their whirlwind rise and nonstop tour before starting work on the second album. This time, the whole band — Teasdale and Chambers plus bassist Ellis Durand, guitarist Josh Mobaraki, and drummer Henry Holmes — contributed to the songwriting, and they’ve said these songs were written to be fun to play live.
They’re certainly fun to listen to. Working again with producer Dan Carey, Wet Leg have crafted 12 extremely catchy songs, cleverly produced and arranged for maximum hook-delivery potential. First single “catch these fists” is absolutely crammed with hooks big and small — from the “ahh ahh man down, LEVEL UP” breakdown pre-chorus to the little guitar filigrees and handclaps that flutter between lines in the verses and choruses.
moisturizer is also more varied — musically and vocally — than their debut. Teasdale can do the cheeky talky bits in her sleep, but she also belts it out, gets sweet and coquettish, lets her falsetto fly, screams with the best of them, and at one point in “cpr,” channels Nick Cave.
Mixing things up considerably, there’s the danceable post-punk numbers (“cpr,” “catch these fists”), dreamy ballads (“11:21”), heartfelt jangly pop (“davina mccall”), the kind of breezy alt-rock that Phoenix would kill for (“Pokemon”), and horny rippers that dabble in industrial sonics (“Pillow Talk”). Then there’s “mangetout,” one of the album’s best, which struts like The Strokes as Teasdale brushes off unwanted advances from some dude: “You’re washed up, irrelevant, and standing in my light.”
While Hester, who has always been camera-shy, has stepped even further out of the spotlight this go-round in Wet Leg’s music videos, press photos and live performances, musically she’s stepped up with two of moisturizer‘s best songs: the sweet and shoegazy “don’t speak,” written from the perspective of her partner and bandmate Josh Mobaraki singing to her, and then the rousing, anthemic closer “u and me at home,” a lovely tribute to her friendship with Teasdale:
“Maybe we could start a band / As some kinda joke /
Well that didn’t quite go to plan / I say on the radio /
Now we been stretched across the world / Over land and sea /
And there’s this big elastic band that pulls you back to me.”
The album isn’t a total home run — “Pond Song” is fun but forgettable, and “11:21” is a little too treacly for its own good — but at a breezy 38 minutes, the album moves at such a pace you don’t have time to dwell on the occasional draggy moment. Second albums from buzz bands used to line the used bins at record stores, but moisturizer is a keeper.