Wet by Reid Calvert
Two Lives https://wet.ffm.to/twolives
(April 4, 2025) - New York’s Wet releases their new album Two Lives today. Their fourth full-length album includes the previously shared songs “Close Range,” “Coffee In The Morning,” “Signs,” “Double,” “Rosy,” and “My Everything.” Two Lives was produced and recorded with longtime collaborators Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow, along with Daniel Aged, Amber Coffman, Buddy Ross and Aidan Spiro. Earlier this week, Wet’s Kelly Zutrau contributed a moving essay to Byline openly discussing risk, adolescence, and her latest journey as a mother. An excerpt from that is below:
“When I found out I was pregnant my whole world got turned around. How could I possibly risk trusting someone enough to have a baby with them and risk what kind of parent I would be. Risk giving up my freedom and risk ruining someone else’s life. These are the questions I was wrestling with while making the album. Can I move on from the safety of the world I’ve carefully created onto something that could be deeper, more meaningful but it’s a big risk to take.
There is a terror that comes along with loving someone that much. Loving someone as deeply as you love your child or life partner comes hand in hand with the unbearable knowledge that you will have to face losing them one day one way or another. I try not to let it but most days the anxiety that this tension creates infiltrates almost every minute of my life now even if it’s just sitting quietly at the back of my mind, it’s always there. That’s what I’ve been writing songs about lately. There’s this love for your child - your family - this deep love that gives such great meaning to everything but that comes with an equally deep fear of losing them. But if anything is worth the risk in this life it is probably that.”
Additionally, Wet will embark on a headline U.S. tour with support from Julie Byrne this May. The eight-date tour will see Wet and Julie Byrne perform in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Washington D.C., New York City and Boston. Tickets on sale HERE.
About Two Lives: 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. It serves as 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. |
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