moisturizer by Wet Leg
I’m a sucker for a good needledrop, especially one as delightful and well placed as Wet Leg’s “mangetout” in Heated Rivalry’s second episode, “Olympians.” I hadn’t heard Wet Leg in a long time. In 2021, during the promotional cycle for their first eponymous album, their song “Chaise Longue" had a moment on TikTok. I found the song mildly annoying, put off by the performativity I sensed lurking beneath their quirkiness. After the hype died down, I heard little else from them until spring 2025, when the online music sphere began to crackle and buzz with talk of a new album.
I am an indiscriminate skeptic when it comes to music journalism. That’s not to say that I don’t engage with it (I’ve been subscribed to Anthony Fantano for years, and I think I have two different email addresses on Pitchfork’s mailing list), but I like to think I consume other people’s opinions the way a careful democrat might watch Fox News—after all, it’s my civic duty to know what people are saying, even if I think it’s total bullshit. Some reviews were intriguing, but when it came out in July, I was too wrapped up in Lorde’s Virgin and Tyler, the Creator’s DON’T TAP THE GLASS to give moisturizer the time of day. Then Hayley Williams claimed August, and Geese ruled my entire fall, and Wet Leg completely dropped off my radar—until Heated Rivalry so kindly reminded me. But would Wet Leg hold up without a steamy gay tryst in the foreground?
As it turns out, one-hundred percent yes. “mangetout” was the perfect entry point, emblematic of the album’s best features. Earnest, sexy, and incredibly witty, both the song and the album thrive on multi-facetedness. The opening track “CPR” starts with a nasty, Tool-esque bassline from Ellis Durand, and its chorus features literal sirens. A hypnotic spoken vocal, somehow invoking both LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Lux Interior of The Cramps, stands stark against the band's abrasive (but not at all unpleasant) sound. Rhian Teasdale’s vocals on moisturizer are generally remarkable, at once unaffected and bratty, sexy and confident but also unbearably vulnerable. They suit the lyrics, dripping with equal parts coolness and desperation.
On “davina mccall,” Teasdale croons, Days turn to months and months into years / We're growing with the pain / we dry each other’s tears. Hers is a voice prone to sarcasm, yet somehow the lyrics make cynicism feel impossible. There is honesty not only in her romantic swells but in her sexuality, too. “pillow talk” is NC-17, simmering with lines like, I can make you sticky, make you hot, screaming for after sun / I can make you beg, can make you wet like an aquarium. If a man were singing, the ick would probably debilitate me, but somehow Teasdale makes it work.
Wet Leg is sonically cohesive and effortlessly chic, and when they get weird it’s authentic and infectious. Hester Chambers’s guitar is enchanting, and the clever percussion from Henry Holmes gives the album its momentum. In play with synths from Josh Mobaraki, moisturizer’s sound oozes with energy and charisma. It’s surprising, emotionally resonant, and in possession of an uncanny familiarity that can only be understood once heard. More than that, moisturizer is one of the most fun listens I’ve had in a while.
Sometimes, and I admit this begrudgingly, the masses are right, and I’m the one who’s behind on the next great thing in music. Where I first sensed a passing fad there is a steadily building canon of excellent alternative rock and skepticism-crushing jams. Wet Leg has continued to prove me wrong and subvert my expectations, and I couldn’t be happier about it.