That was clever. The original Wet Leg – singer Rhian Teasdale and guitarist Hester Chambers – instantly snagged global attention with a droll novelty single, launched with a knowing faux-rustic video, about a sexy piece of furniture. After scoring a chart-topping multi-genre debut album, the duo recruited three noisy, hirsute male musician-writers, toughened up, and metamorphosed into one of the hottest indie combos on the planet.
That evolution is crystallised in their second album, another smash and – in its flawlessness – a 21st-century equivalent of the Human League’s epochal Dare. Less irony-laden than the first Wet Leg LP, moisturizer mostly celebrates Teasdale’s having fallen head over heels for a non-binary woman, inspiration surely for the provocative title.
Some songs, including the galvanizing opener “CPR” – half-spoken (like “Chaise Longue”), half-yelped – are driven or punctuated by spiky, surging post-punk passages. The zigzagging guitar fill on “catch these fists”, a kiss-off to horndogs, recalls Franz Ferdinand. ”Pokémon” is airy polished pop. “11.21” is slow, poignant, textured – the smitten Teasdale’s intonations fleetingly Nico-ish. The jaunty “don’t speak", written and breathily sung by Chambers, features a burst of mildewed late-1960s riffing.
Teasdale’s spontaneous confidences about her euphoric romance are counterpointed by admissions of fear that it won’t last and spasms of inferiority to the loved one – the curse of the idolater. “So many creatures in the fucking world/How could I be your one?/Be your marshmallow worm,” she sings matter-of-factly on “liquidize”.
Her vulnerability doesn’t come across as neurotic: it’s an invitation to her partner to be vulnerable back for intimacy’s sake. That’s so they can bliss out being “U and Me at Home”, which is the title of the grooving anthem that triumphantly closes moisturizer and seals the band’s bond with their fans when they play it live.
Wet Leg cite as influences Bjork, Bombay Bicycle Club, PJ Harvey, the White Stripes, the Strokes, and Kings of Leon. There’s a hint in their sound of the scuzzy, brooding The Duke Spirit. Liela Moss and her bandmates should’ve made it big but have never really left their garage. Wet Leg, in contrast, have quit their chaise longue for a throne, but not one that's likely to confine them sonically.
