I just wrote about beating the sophomore curse with one review—Sister Ray’s Believer —but now we have another sophomore release from a much bigger band, the Isle of Wight’s Wet Leg, who, of course, exploded in 2022 with “Chaise Lounge” and the follow-up, good self-titled debut album. Though it was definitely not mind-blowing, it did give more of a mainstream voice to some of the more feminine post-punk and took them to the Grammys.
But now we have the follow-up album, moisturizer, and it is also just fine… It’s not a bad album by any stretch—the production is tight and some of the catchier tracks—”catch these fists,” “mangetout” “CPR,”—really hit with the playful and satirical, witty vocals from Rhian and backing vocals from Hester about modern strangeness and all consuming love. The buzzing rhythm and lead guitars and bass work, and some of the drum fills are quite combustible, hitting on those hooks you’d want from Wet Leg. However, much of the second half of this album, starting after the seventh track, “pond song,” which has a great and explosive outro that really makes Wet Leg stand out, kind of falls flat. And some of the tracks are just a bit unmemorable.
The track “pokemon,” is really predictable, and even though some of the cutesy, fun lyrics are there, musically this track really feels like it could have been more and hit harder. “Pillow Talk” comes in this this really dark bass riff that feels almost stoner rock ala Truckfighters, but the lyrics are just so, whatever. I just can’t get behind them and it kind of kills the song for me. Following that is “don’t speak,” which again, has a interesting and driving slacker rock guitar part and some hooky leads, but the lyrics are absolutely buried in the mix. It’s kind of like a bad take on shoegaze. That same sound is done better with “u and me at home,” but the chanty vocals about just chilling at home really do nothing for me.
“11:21,” sounds like they were going for a Florence & The Machine vibe, but the vocals here feel very off, almost diving into that vocal vibrato style without much flair or style. And musically, this seems like more of a jam that could have been further refined.
Wet Leg knew exactly what they were doing with moisturizer, saying that they went into the studio with 16 songs and cut some of the heavier ones for more variety, but I think in doing so, they tried to replicate some other sounds too hard and lost some of that hooky Wet Leg style. So did they beat the sophomore curse? Well, this one is pretty on par with the debut, so I guess they hit even ground.
