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The sophomore full-length album from Wet Leg is not so much a slump, as it is a sort of stagnation. Where their self-titled was an attempt at breaking ground in a burgeoning-at-the-time revival of post-punk music, ‘Moisturizer’ is mostly painting indie rock and pop by the numbers. Not without its fair share of rowdy highlights, it puts its best foot forward with one of the lead singles ‘CPR’. Its funky, grime-caked bass and literal gallows humour calls upon other revivalists in this style like Viagra Boys to set the very lovesick tone of this project. Contrasted immediately by the confectionery-level sweetness of ‘liquidize’, Wet Leg are trying to prove to us here that they can straddle the two poles of obsession. It’s convincing initially, but as the tracklist progresses, cracks in the album’s structure begin to appear.
Similarities in instrumental palettes are acceptable, so long as you can justify the uniformity with adequate variety in song structure, intensity, dynamics, all that good stuff. The problem with ‘Moisturizer’ is that Wet Leg rarely does this, particularly on the slacker side of things. ‘davina mccall’ bears a lot of musical similarity to ‘liquidize’, which bears resemblance to ‘jennifer’s body’, which bears a little too much resemblance to ‘don’t speak’. The result is a stylistic homogeneity that sees the band painting themselves into a corner, hardly helpful given their tendency towards the silly. Instead of emboldening themselves to push even harder in the direction of their debut, they’ve mostly foregone one of the things that made them so interesting in the first place: their sense of humour.
This album shines in its bolder spots. ‘catch these fists’ is the kind of angular dance-punk that is highly reminiscent of 2000’s chart-toppers like Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party. It oozes with a similar brand of attitude and snark that made those groups so exciting at the time. A hilarious threat to overeager club-going men, it’s Wet Leg at their subversive best. ‘mangetout’ appears to point the ire at an old ex who’s trying to live vicariously through the band. If publicly dragging them over the coals on record doesn’t get the point across, I’m not sure anything will.
Wet Leg channel their inner Queens of the Stone Age on the incredibly horny ‘pillow talk’. Doing away with their usual turns-of-phrase in lieu of some of the most on-the-nose sexual references to come out of the modern indie scene since, maybe, The Last Dinner Party’s ‘Nothing Matters’. The riffs sizzle with the same kind of desire that the lyrics portray. It’s moments like these that keep the album from being totally lost in its own sauce. They manage a heartening closer in ‘u and me at home’, with one of the more memorable refrains on the record to boot. It concludes on a higher note than it could’ve, following the oddly dreamy ‘11:21’. A unique change of pace on the album, but not one that sticks its landing unfortunately. It lacks anything attractive beyond its lackadaisical mood and wallpaper instrumentation. The same goes for ‘pokemon’, though the peppier beat and cuter lyrical sentiment saves it from being a complete dud.
Wet Leg haven’t quite established a sound they’re comfortable with just yet. They do lots of different things competently, but they lack finish. For as many highlights that this album contains, it delivers nearly as many half-baked ideas. The cutting room floor could’ve housed a few of the fattier cuts, others could’ve sat in the oven for a bit longer. Wet Leg are still in an incubation period, it’s a matter of whether they can survive it or not, and strengthen an already solid foundation by sharpening their songwriting capabilities.
Dan Will Review 