moisturizer is the ripping second album by Wet Leg, the Isle of Wight five-piece founded by Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers. It’s fun, freaky and fabulous, an unbridled display of the live muscle they built up over a few years of non-stop touring. Punchier, prettier and more perverted where it counts, moisturizer is an album of manic love songs and well-timed kiss-offs, delivered by a clan of the UK’s most beloved oddballs.

Ahead of their tour dates in Aotearoa and so-called Australia for Laneway Festival (including a couple of side shows), I chatted to Rhian Teasdale about queer awakenings, scaring heterosexual men and Wet Leg’s signature visceral lyrical style.

Image: Wet Leg’s Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, photograph by Iris Luz.

Dani Leever: Hi Rhian, thank you so much for chatting with me! I’m so sorry, my Zoom account has my partner’s name because they logged into my account to do a bird watching class last week.

Rhian Teasdale: Oh! Well mine has my manager’s name, so we’re kind of even.

DL: Well I guess my partner and your manager are having a beautiful chat! Anyway, how are you? Are you excited to travel to this side of the world soon?

RT: Yeah! We’ve been a couple times actually which is wild. I’m really excited to be going back in February, because the first time we came to Australia it was in the UK summer. I got there and I was like, Oh it’s kind of cold in Australia… 

Plus I really like it [in Melbourne], it’s very cute! It’s just nice to walk around; everything’s just very idyllic. It’s very trendy. 

DL: I can confirm Melbourne is trendy. I’m so excited to chat about moisturizer! I have so many thoughts and feelings; it’s a banger of an album.

To me, moisturizer is all about, like, unfettered, gooey, horny, borderline feral emotions – the kind of extreme emotions that come from anger, or from love, or from lust. So I wanted to ask about the emotion of the album, because it’s something that’s quite potent.

RT: I think you kind of said everything I could ever say (laughs)! But I can offer a personal insight to it. When we started writing moisturizer, I was off the back of a good couple years of touring.

At the beginning of one of the very first shows that we played outside of the UK, that’s when I met my [now] partner, and this is my first relationship with a non-man. For a lot of our starting to get together, I was on tour, so it was a lot of long distance yearning and big romantic gestures – like they’d like come out to Paris to see me.

It was all very much whirlwind romance, but there was [also] a lot of the achiness of missing someone; it was horrible and really great at the same time, just yearning for someone that much.

So then when it came to writing the second album, for a minute I was like, Oh my god, what are we gonna write this about guys? Like we’ve just been in dressing rooms and venues… Whilst we’d definitely done a lot of living, we’d also not done much living at all.

I always thought, No, I’m not going to write a love song, I just didn’t see the point. For me personally, when I was in my hetero relationships, it didn’t really feel like something that was at all empowering for me to write about. Even if it was just, Oh, I’m in love with this man, I don’t know – there was something that didn’t quite sit right with me.

Which is funny, because maybe that was the foresight that I was actually queer all along (laughs). There was just something in me that couldn’t put myself in that position where I’m writing about lusting after a guy, even though I was with men.

So when it came to writing the second album, I couldn’t do anything but write about my romantic relationship with my current partner. I wasn’t really thinking about it going anywhere, but now I talk about how in love I am with my partner in interviews all the time, it’s quite funny. I guess I just couldn’t help myself. 

Image: Alice Backham

DL: Oh, I really love that. My partner and I were listening to the album the other night, and they said – and this is a direct quote – that moisturizer is “a chef’s kiss for hot blooded dopamine-chasing ADHD horny queers” (laughs). I would like to know that if you agree with that statement.

RT: (laughs) That’s pretty accurate.

DL: I’m so glad you agree! Queer yearning is just like a world of its own. And unless you’ve experienced it, it’s so hard to describe. It’s exciting and so intense, like, What is happening in my body?

RT: Oh yeah no, it’s terrifying. In the best way.

DL: Totally. I think what’s so captivating about the album is that it captures that precisely: there’s a little bit of saccharine bubblegum vibes, but a lot of the lyrics are so visceral, like, “It hit me like a roundhouse / Left hook, uppercut” and “Every night I lick my pillow / I wish I was licking you”.

It’s that vibe of basically wanting to launch yourself into the sun because the feeling of this first queer relationship is so intense.

Your lyrics are always so vivid and expressive, can you tell me about if that’s always been a deliberate choice or just how you process your thoughts?

RT: I think there’s so much that you can get away with in a song that would just sound horrible if you just read the lyrics out by themselves. It would just be so exposing, and too much (laughs).

A song is like a playground. You can just become different characters in your songs, and I think there’s definitely a real sense of escapism… from my insecurities that suddenly come to light as soon as I step out of the house. A song is like a pure way of expressing how you feel – a pure way of capturing it. You can say all these ridiculous things and get away with it.

Image: Alice Backham

DL: That’s really fun. I’d love to chat about the music video for ‘pokemon’! It’s so gorgeous! My reading of it is that the narrator and the egg are having this relationship and no one understands it – like the neighbours, then the hazmat suit guys. But they ultimately triumph over the naysayers, when they drive off into the sunset together after you hatch out of the egg.

Can you tell me about the idea behind that video?

RT: Yeah! Basically Elliot [Arndt] from Faux Real – we’ve been touring with them a bunch and I’ve known them for years, so it was really great when Elliot was up for directing the video. We were just so busy and in the thick of touring, [so] we were just like, “Elliot, could you come up with like a concept, can you send us a treatment?” And he did.

Originally it was an old man, and the old man is looking after the egg, and then at the end the egg hatches and it’s a younger version of the man, and the young man gets in the car and drives off into the sunset. And I was like, I really love this concept, I really love the egg thing, but I think it needs to be a girl as the protagonist, and I think the girl needs to be Alice Longyu Gao. And I think it needs to be me in the egg, and I need us to drive off into the sunset together.

He was like, “Oh yeah, actually I see it.” I just wanted to present this kind of sapphic relationship between Alice and the egg, because it’s a love song. It couldn’t be the old man turning into a young man, it needed to be Alice and…

DL: You’re like, get me in the egg.

RT: Yeah! And I’m like, Alice, will you look after me if I fall? She’s really cool.

DL: That’s so cute! Particularly as eggs are like quite a queer symbolism – like the idea of hatching or emerging when you’re ready, and coming (out) into your own, your final form!

RT: I love that. Oh my God, that wasn’t even intentional! I am egg, a baby queer coming out of my shell!

DL: I love it so much (laughs)! Okay, I’m dying to ask this. I was so obsessed with the cover art for moisturizer when it came out. And the first thing I thought was, This is giving me Jennifer’s Body energy, like that pose where she’s smiling [and crouching]. And I love that movie; my laptop background is [a film still of] the sign that says, “Welcome to Devil’s Kettle”. And then I saw that you had a song called ‘jennifer’s body’, and I was like, Whoa!

The first part of my question is: what draws you to that movie, Jennifer’s Body… besides it being gay (laughs)?

RT: Well, yeah! When I first watched that movie as a “straight” teenager, I was like, This is a cool film (laughs). I watched it recently as a new baby queer, and I was like, Oh. My. God. I just had, like, a whole new appreciation for it. Such a great film.

And yeah, definitely the bit where she’s on the floor eating chicken, I didn’t even think about that link with the album cover, but you’re right!

DL: Yeah, with the spooky grin and everything! It’s so cool.

RT: Yeah! There are so many things that when you’re like writing and making an album, you just kind of subconsciously absorb, and it all filters through and comes out as something. It’s really funny, like making all of these little links looking back.

Left: moisturizer album cover. Right: Jennifer’s Body (2009), Fox Atomic.

DL: Totally! I guess for you it’s references that so subconscious and embedded into how you create, but then for someone with fresh eyes, they’re like, Did you realise that these are theses links here and here? And you’re like, Oh yeah, of course!

Okay, second part of the question: what was the thought behind having that really spooky-ooky cover image? Was it to scare away the heterosexuals?

RT: (Laughs) It kind of came about quite accidentally. It was Iris Luz who shot the cover. I really wanted to work with her, but I didn’t know her at all. [The band] hadn’t been in front of the camera in a good few months, and because [the band and Iris] didn’t know each other, we thought it would be good to all go away and have like a fun little weekend together taking photos.

And one of the photos that stood out to me at the end of the weekend was one of just me by some stairs in that, like, crouching pose. And I was like, This is kind of scary. I like it. But also, it was quite pretty as well, so I think that that kind of juxtaposition of the sugary pastel blues and greens… there’s definitely, like, a femininity to it.

But yeah, I think you’re right. Like, there is a part of me that just wanted to subvert… and hopefully scare away some of the straight men. But it never works! They always think it’s for them, but I try!

DL: Oh, fully! You even have that song [‘catch these fists’] where the lyrics are basically saying like: you come over to me and say that I’m your type, but please will you fuck off? I will eat you. I will fully eat you. 

RT: Yeah, totally. But straight men will hear that song and be like, That’s a fun song! Maybe she wants me. 

DL: Another example of men assuming all art is for them! Anyway, I’m excited for you folks to travel here! Laneway Festival is going to be so much fun. I’m going to the Melbourne show and I’m so excited. I know that you’ve got to run off because you just landed in Chicago.

RT: Yeah! I’m about to go to Trader Joe’s and get an ice cream. That’s my plan.

DL: That sounds absolutely delightful. Do you know what ice cream you’re gonna get?

RT: No, I don’t know yet. I’m not familiar with the ice cream selection in America. What are you up to for the rest of the day, is it like midday for you?

DL: Yeah! Tonight is my friend’s Christmas party. We have karaoke. Should I sing ‘pillow talk’ and just shock everyone? (laughs).

RT: (Laughs) Yes! I’ve actually started travelling with my own pillow. Not to like… do stuff to… But just ’cause when we stay in so many different hotels and we’re jetlagged and struggling to sleep through the night anyway, having my pillow from home helps so much.

DL: I so get it. I’m so pillow specific. Queer pillow obsession really rings true.

RT: Yay, I’m so normal (laughs). It’s honestly been so nice chatting with you! Thank you so much!

DL: Thank you so much, it’s been so much fun to chat. I’m so excited for the Melbourne show!

Wet Leg are heading on tour! Head here for tickets to their solo shows, and see a full list of their Australian dates below:

Thursday, 5 February – Laneway Festival, Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland)
Saturday, 7 February – Laneway Festival Gold Coast, Kombumerri Land
Sunday, 8 February – Laneway Festival Sydney, Gadigal and Bidjigal Land
Monday, 9 February – Roundhouse, Sydney, Gadigal Land
Tuesday, 10 February – Northcote Theatre, Melbourne, Wurundjeri Land
Friday, 13 February – Laneway Festival Melbourne, Wurundjeri Land
Saturday, 14 February – Laneway Festival Adelaide, Kaurna Land
Sunday, 15 February – Laneway Festival Perth. Whadjuk Land

Listen to moisturizer here and watch the video for ‘pokemon’ here.