WET at the Garrison (1197 Dundas West), Wednesday (February 3), 8 pm. $15. Limited tickets available at the door. See listing.
After a lot of scheduling and rescheduling our interview because of illness, Wet singer Kelly Zutrau gets real about what put her out of commission.
“I had a really, really bad hangover yesterday,” she says from western Massachusetts, a safe distance from the band’s home base of Brooklyn, which was recently pummeled by Winter Storm Jonas. “We did Fallon the night before and then we stayed up all night watching it at a bar, and I just was so sick after that.”
Zutrau deals with intense stage fright and calls the band’s late-night debut “one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.” Yet in concert she appears concentrated and calm, her smooth, blissed-out voice the focal point of Wet’s dreamy, minimalist R&B.
“It’s an intense fear of fucking up bad enough that everyone will walk out,” she explains. “Or of being so exposed up there. The possibility of throwing up onstage or singing the wrong words just scares me so much for some reason.”
Three years ago, Wet – which includes college friends Marty Sulkow and Joe Valle – released an EP of devastating heartbreakers written after Zutrau moved back to New York City from Providence to pursue an ill-fated relationship. Romantic liaisons are still a big part of recently released debut full-length Don’t You, but it also delves deeper.
“What I moved toward with my writing for this album, and especially the newer music I’m working on, is that the ‘you’ – the person I’m singing to – used to be a specific person but has now become a stand-in for more abstract kinds of loss and rejection and loneliness.”
Zutrau says she’s interested in exploring the “relationship I have with myself or making art or just being alive or being afraid to die.”
If that all sounds heavy, it is. But Don’t You’s shimmering, gorgeous pop songs never feel overly weighed down by darkness, and hope shines through on the breathtaking final track, These Days, when, over swelling piano and strings, Zutrau sings, “I know what it takes, and I know we can make it.”
“I need to write songs in order to process hard things I can’t process any other way,” she says. “So if I’m feeling really good, I don’t necessarily feel the urge to write a song. I’d rather just be enjoying the moment.”
music@nowtoronto.com | @mattgeewilliams
