Rhian Teasdale is a frontwoman who leans into the uncanny and the unusual, by no means letting you guess her subsequent transfer. Her vocals get on the spiky discomfort of being susceptible—just like the buddy who places on a foolish voice whereas they’re sharing unhealthy information. On moisturizer, love is a power: It strikes, hits, leaves you gasping for air. For Teasdale, these are “not demure love songs,” however “determined” ones. She oscillates violently, gleefully between the phobia and the marvel of falling for somebody. “Name the triple 9 and provides me CPR,” she sings in a biting falsetto all damsel-in-distress. Moments later, she’s shapeshifted right into a deeper, deadpan alter ego, voice booming from the underside of her chest as she asks: “Is it love or suicide?”
This can be a daring new search for Moist Leg, the duo of Teasdale and guitarist and co-writer Hester Chambers, who met whereas learning music as youngsters on the Isle of Wight, a pastoral island off the south coast of England. They have been the band everybody had an opinion on in 2022 after the viral breakthrough of their debut single “Chaise Longue.” Relying on who you spoke to, they have been grifters whose success was formed by trade executives, or the prophesied second coming of 2000s indie sleaze.
A part of their attraction was their unseriousness—frolicking in lobster claws and straw hats, they refused to assign any deeper which means to their Lewis Carroll-meets-Arctic Monkeys gibberish. That irreverence was intoxicating, within the discipline of mainstream guitar music by which girls are sometimes horny, tortured, or each, and infrequently afforded the liberty to be merely foolish. However beneath all of the gags, take-downs, and audacious hooks, there was an enigmatic query mark round who Moist Leg actually have been.
Within the build-up to moisturizer, the band underwent two main modifications, creatively and personally. First, they started working extra collaboratively as a five-piece, recruiting reside musicians guitarist Joshua Mobaraki, bassist Ellis Durand, and drummer Henry Holmes to hitch the songwriting course of. The result’s a meatier, extra expansive sound, beefed up as soon as once more by producer Dan Carey, who’s additionally labored with Fontaines D.C. and Black Midi.
Second, Teasdale fell in love together with her companion, who’s non-binary, and found her queer identification within the course of. All of a sudden, writing love songs didn’t really feel boring. This seismic shift in Teasdale’s outlook suffuses moisturizer with all of the anxious pleasure of second adolescence. The emotional register of the file is that of somebody who’s simply been prescribed glasses, and is surprised at seeing clearly for the primary time.