Wet

The name of Wet’s fourth album, “Two Lives,” originated during a dramatic moment in 2022. Singer-writer Kelly Zutrau was in Portland with the producer Buddy Ross (Frank Ocean, Haim), and the two were struggling to focus on music. But Zutrau was jolted into action when she received some surprising news: She was pregnant. At first, she felt overwhelmed by grief. Her future suddenly felt narrow and constricted, the limitless potential of youth yanked from her in a single moment. That day, she wrote the lyric that would define the mood of the entire record: “I wish I could live two lives.” Zutrau and Ross wrote most of “Two Lives” in the days following the positive pregnancy test. “Two Lives” is a document of the uncertainty that surrounds life’s major transitions.

Wet fans will hear Zutrau’s personal evolution across “Two Lives,” an album on which she grapples with memories of her own childhood as she faces the daunting transition into motherhood. In a recent interview, she recalled her early experiences growing up in Boston as the first of four daughters to her young single mother in the 1990s. “We were constantly moving around and lived with a certain amount of unpredictability, but my mom was very encouraging of anything artistic. Always signing us up for local plays, and taking me to singing auditions.” Zutrau said. You can feel this sense of unpredictability on “Two Lives,” as Zutrau explores ideas of home, restlessness, and the eternal search for something that’s been missing. Zutrau taps into the surreal space between the past and the present, creating a dreamy collage of memories and emotional ephemera.

Wet’s sound has evolved, too: During Wet’s early days, the group established themselves as savvy pop songwriters with a knack for genre-defying production. As Zutrau has evolved, she’s retreated from the polish and tidiness of her earlier songs. She still has a pop sensibility and an ear for hooks, as demonstrated on “Nostalgia,” her 2023 collaboration with rapper Rod Wave and her first appearance on a Billboard chart-topping album, along with her recent appearance on Fred Again’s “Actual Life 3” album. But now, after a decade of making slicker-sounding albums and collaborations, Zutrau has accessed a deeper, messier realm of her artistic psyche, and seems to be more interested in working at the unfinished fringes of pop. The album was produced and recorded with Zutrau's longtime collaborators Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow, along with Daniel Aged (Inc. no world, Rosalia) Amber Coffman (Dirty Projectors), Buddy Ross and Aidan Spiro. The result of these collaborations is a project that is sometimes melancholic, sometimes bright, and always soulful.