FILTER ALBUMS
Up the unction
Expanded Isle Of Wight band’s second album runs like a well-oiled machine.
By Victoria Segal.
Wet Leg
★★★★
Moisturizer
DOMINO. CD/DL/LP
“MAYBE WE could start a band/As some kinda joke,” sings Rhian Teasdale on U And Me At Home, the closing track on Wet Leg’s second album. “Well, that didn’t quite go to plan.” Three years after Teasdale and her hair-veiled co-conspirator Hester Chambers released Chaise Longue – less pop song, more invasive indie species – to immediate viral acclaim, Wet Leg are a band transformed. If the depths of their original ambition can be measured by the fact their Grammy-winning debut single was originally stashed away in a folder marked “High Jams”, Moisturizer makes it clear – whether by design or circumstance – those days of whimsical bonnet-wearing insouciance are gone.
The most obvious change is that Wet Leg are now officially a five-piece, the foundation duo of Teasdale and Chambers joined in songwriting and in the studio by the members of their touring band: Joshua Mobaraki (guitar and synths), Henry Holmes (drums) and Ellis Durand (bass). They might have initially been guileless about the realities of a working group when they unexpectedly found themselves thrown into the public eye (“I had no idea what a promo tour was,” Teasdale admits to MOJO) but Moisturizer sees them newly armoured, hard-fired by extensive time on the road and the glare of fame. (Just check out the metal gauntlets and biker boots Teasdale wore to perform first single Catch These Fists on American TV in April.)