Format
- 88875169912CD £9.00
Wet
Don't You
Much has been made of the utopian merging of indie and traditional pop worlds in recent years, but Don’t You is an album that takes this fusion to an unprecedented place. This is a benchmark record that delicately sews together the clean songwriting of big-pop, the melodic sensuality of R&B, and the faint twang of country with touches of experimental production and precise instrumentation to create a bold and effortless-feeling new space. Wet, comprised of singer-songwriter Kelly Zutrau, and multi-instrumentalists Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow, make songs that resist easy categorization and invite every listener to bask in its intimate glow. But despite their wide-ranging sensibilities, Wet never compromises its core: sturdy pop songwriting and piercing lyrics.
Written during a period of solitude in a rented house in Western Massachusetts last year, Kelly’s deeply personal words on Don’t You project both sweetness and brutality, confusion and clarity, rawness and polish, naivete and wisdom: “These days I can’t take too much,” she sings with an unnerving directness. “Today I scare so easily.” Kelly’s naked lyrics, along with her intuitive grasp of familiar chords and pure, catchy song structures place her in a diverse lineage of potent American female singer-songwriters alongside women like Fiona Apple and Taylor Swift. Joe, meanwhile, has emerged as a brilliant producer, delicately fine-tuning each song and creating uncanny grooves. Marty, the true musician of the group, textures the songs with some of the strongest guitar playing in indie-pop today. Together, Joe and Marty work on all aspects of the album’s instrumentation; they take Kelly’s demos and arrange them to perfection.
The trio met through mutual friends as college students in New York City in 2007. After a few years of informal dabbling, they began officially making music as Wet during the summer of 2012, an especially aimless and emotionally turbulent period. "We were all a little lost and looking for something that felt meaningful, so we focused all of this emotional energy into something productive,” Kelly says. After releasing a few songs on SoundCloud -- like “Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl,” a weak-kneed but strong-headed breakup ballad -- they quickly began attracting attention, sometimes from unexpected places.
The Fader described Wet as “pure, unhurried… sounds like it was made in the city but good while driving to the country,” and social media stars like Kylie Jenner began gushing on Instagram. Former New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones listed “Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl” as his favorite song of 2013, describing it as “completely perfect.” Interview magazine wrote: “Electronic music has never been this lonely and beautiful.”
The product of many months of seclusion, soul-searching and intense collaboration, Don’t You fulfils the promise that Wet’s music has made since day one. Old fans will rejoice; new listeners will quickly be pulled into the music’s intimate embrace.