Moist Leg: Moisturizer
(Domino)
Launched 11 July 2025
CD | Vinyl | Cassette | DL | Streaming
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
The delight of the Isle of Wight are again with their storming second album. Now a fully-fledged five-piece band, Moist Leg supply a festival-friendly set of 12 extra songs about relationships and delicate furnishings. Robert Plummer feels properly hydrated.
It’s a dialog you might properly have had your self over the previous two or three years. From boomers to zoomers, there’s no scarcity of jaded music followers ready to moan in regards to the state of recent pop. In some unspecified time in the future within the proceedings, nonetheless, you’ll have a tendency to listen to the phrases: “However I believe Moist Leg are actually attention-grabbing.”
Sure, by some means Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have ended up fronting the indie band that refreshes demographics their rivals can’t attain. And their affect has been felt all through the business, with artists as different as Harry Kinds and Home Of All overlaying their songs stay. Attempt matching that, Final Dinner Celebration.
Now’s clearly the time to consolidate their place. Moisturizer sees them doubling down on their strengths, delivering a breezy, assured assertion of feminine sexuality that takes no nonsense from upstarts of any gender. All packaged up of their mid-paced, loose-limbed neo-grunge, whereas Teasdale voices depth-charge quips in her breathy model that delays, with out blunting, their ferocious affect.
“You assume I’m fairly, you assume I’m fairly merciless/You say I scare ya, I do know most individuals do,” she sings on Mangetout. Then comes the punchline: “Good strive, now get out the way in which.” Different putdowns can be found, together with Catch These Fists, a literal intestine response to undesirable consideration: “I simply threw up in my mouth when he simply tried to ask me out.”
CPR, the album’s opening track, equates love and suicide in a frankly disturbing method, giving free rein to a declaration of passionate emergency. “Put your mouth to mine and provides me CPR/Name the triple 9 and provides me CPR,” runs the refrain.
Elsewhere, the temper is extra affectionate: a number of songs channel the giddy rush of new-found romance, together with the blissed-out paean to Huge Brother presenter Davina McCall that bears her identify. Likewise, Pond Tune, considered one of two tunes written solely by Chambers, explores a maelstrom of sentiments over a sinuous synth riff. “So candy, even if you’re bitter/I’m considering ‘bout you each minute each hour.”
All of it peaks on Pokemon, which borrows Eighties pop tropes to ship a pure shot of aural oxytocin. “You style so candy like grenadine/You might be my favorite human being,” croons Teasdale. Galloping drums propel the tune ahead like a quickening pulse as the 2 lovers plan a drive from the “Isle of Wight to Tokyo”: “I don’t wanna take it gradual.”
Moist Leg’s defining second continues to be their debut single Chaise Longue, prized for its sassy speak of horizontal pursuits and buttered muffins. This time round, the band’s furniture-related second comes from Pillow Speak, an altogether extra blatant train involving, er, intimacy with a pillow. It’s a whoop and a holler that even drags in Wild West icon Calamity Jane, presumably referenced for the sexual ambiguity that surrounds her legend.
When the solar went down, the fast tempo of the music fell: late-night ballad 11:21 provides emotional vary to the album as Teasdale pines for her absent companion. “It’s not just like the moon forgets to shine after I’m not with you, but it surely feels prefer it simply would possibly,” she sings movingly, including: “I really like you want no person else.”
U And Me At Residence brings the temper full circle, kicking off with a sampled breakbeat however quickly settling into cruising pace. It’s a tranquil finish to the document that looks like some form of reconciliation: “You inform me it’s not so dangerous/You all the time know simply what to say.”
A courageous document that wears its coronary heart on its sleeve, Moisturizer has a confessional tone that lends authenticity to its lyrics. Musically, too, the album pulls no punches, because of a thundering triple-guitar assault and an assured rhythm part. Moist Leg are within the large league now – and on this proof, they’ve the whole lot it takes to remain there.
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You’ll find Moist Leg on-line at https://wetlegband.com/. They’re additionally on X and Instagram as @wetlegband.
All phrases by Robert Plummer. Extra writing by Robert might be discovered at his writer’s archive. He’s additionally on X as @robertp926.
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