"Moisturizer" is Wet Leg's new release

Joes Exotic and Wicks. The Llandudno goats. Quizzing on Zoom. Normal People. Dill Danding. Banana bread. Jackie Weaver. Chaise Longue. When the cultural history of Britain during Covid is written, Wet Leg will surely sneak in there right at the end.

Looking like Amish brides, serving an irresistible PiL-via-Sleaford Mods bassline and a vocal delivery more deadpan than a Tefal cemetery, they delivered Carry On Post-Punking levels of innuendo in their saucy hymn to reclining furniture, including that borrowed-from-Mean Girls line about buttering your muffin. It was the word-of-mouth, “Oh my god have you heard this?” musical moment of early 2021, and went viral just as the actual coronavirus, we were assured, was on the wane.

The Isle Of Wight duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers (like Sparks, Wet Leg are nominally a full band but come on), broke out just in time to catch the wave of live music returning, their early gigs a riot of glee and giant rubber lobster claws, and surfed that crest of euphoria all the way to the top spot in the album charts.

The success of their debut - which included Grammy and BRIT Awards - creates a certain degree of mild peril for their second. This time around, the surprise factor has gone, and expectation levels are moderate to high. Repetition would be redundant, and merely making Wet Leg Part II would be viewed as a bit of a let-down, regardless of the excellence of its execution. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle and you can’t stand in the same river twice. Something needed to change.

Happily, one or two things have. The first thing that strikes you about Moisturizer - look at that big American Z, targeting those Transatlantic sales - is that it’s more obviously aimed at the dancefloor. It’s not as if their debut wasn’t danceable, but opening track CPR comes bumping in with a big fat electro bassline and the tempo barely lets up throughout.

The other main development is a lyrical one. Teasdale’s approach has shifted away from archness and distance, and embraced directness. Sometimes that means confrontation. Pugnacious, chaotic lead single Catch These Fists delivers an epic smackdown to a loser who tried to hit on Teasdale (“Some guy comes up says I’m his type/l just threw up in my mouth”) while Mangetout features the exquisite description, “I know you’re up at night hunched over your phone like a tree atop a hill that’s crooked from the wind that bites”. Something has been unlocked or unleashed.

More often, it means an unashamed emotional vulnerability. Tracks like Liquidize (that big Z again), the blissed-out, MBV-like Don’t Speak, Pond Song and the album’s only true slowie, 11:21, are relatively uncomplicated love songs. And the sexual content is no longer merely implied: “Every night I fuck my pillow wishing I was fucking you...”

One thing that hasn’t altered is the judicious deployment of cultural references in the vein of, “I’ve got Buffalo 66 on DVD”. This time round it’s Calamity Jane, Dark Fruits cider and The Princess Bride, and there’s a song called Davina McCall and another titled Pokemon.

Those two, in particular, feature actual singing, a departure from the quasi-parlando /sprechgesang style which first caught the ear. But Teasdale hasn’t fully abandoned the shtick of talk-singing with a certain dispassionate reticence, as if begrudging you the breath. It’s a smart trick: under-emoting does half the work for you, suggesting that the surface meaning is not the real one. But it’s almost superfluous on an album where meanings are seldom hidden. Wet Leg can never again attain virality. But Moisturizer is a strong stab at something else: permanence.