Wet Leg: Moisturizer
I’m in love, and you’re to blame
On moisturizer, Wet Leg don’t just write love songs—they hurl themselves, headlong and wide-eyed, into love’s chaotic storm. If their debut offered sly winks and sideways glances, this second album flings open the windows and screams into the street, breathless with the force of new desire.
Rhian Teasdale, Wet Leg’s magnetic frontwoman, sounds like she’s holding a live wire with both hands. Her voice veers from giddy falsetto to bruised baritone, embodying all the messy terror that comes when love stops being polite and starts devouring you whole. On moisturizer, love doesn’t gently knock; it kicks the door off its hinges.
“Call the triple nine and give me CPR,” she pleads, half damsel, half daredevil—romance as life support, threat, and promise all at once.
This time, Wet Leg are more than the cheeky duo that once skipped through lobster claws and punchlines. Working as a full five-piece, their sound thickens and blooms. Producer Dan Carey’s touch makes everything hit harder, but it’s the urgency of the songwriting that jolts like a defibrillator. Teasdale’s discovery of her queer identity charges these songs with the headrush of a new adolescence: raw, wide-eyed, and pulsing with questions that feel too big for the body.
I melt for you, I liquidize, I want you to want me all the time
When she sings “Is it love or suicide?” in her deepest register, it’s not rhetorical—it’s the tightrope she’s walking. On liquidize, she nearly dissolves with disbelief at her own luck. The guitars ring out like alarm bells. The chorus dares you not to feel the swoop in your gut. Elsewhere, Hester Chambers pens pond song, a prayer and a gut punch rolled into one—a moment where meeting someone isn’t just a spark but a spiritual slap across the face.
Even Wet Leg’s silly streak sharpens this time. The wink-nudge humor doesn’t undercut the stakes; it highlights them. There’s tension in how they boomerang between wanting to drown in cliché and wanting to gag on it—sometimes in the same breath. “Catch these fists” may recycle old tricks, but when Teasdale lets her voice quake on “davina mccall” or stretches into spectral delicacy on “11:21,” it’s clear: these songs bleed.
I don’t want your love, I just wanna fight
The result is an album that feels reckless in the best way—like the rush of a love so big and urgent it can’t help but crash against its own edges. moisturizer is no demure love letter. It’s a dare, a slap, a kiss that leaves a mark. Wet Leg have cracked themselves open and found, in the chaos, a heart that beats loud – and yet, remains in a state of bliss.
