Wet :: "U Da Best"

Ignoring the grammar and style of the title, Brooklyn three-piece Wet build a small, stuttering slice of delicious pop on "U Da Best". The band channels some of the intensely modern James Blake-style sonics on the song's intro: heavily layer vocals, vocodered in places, a measured sparseness, the creeping sadness that hangs at the edges of happy moments in lyrics like, "All I know is/when you hold me/I still feel lonely". Not quite a break up song, it's about being happy and sad together. The chorus almost literally breathes its own tonal modulation, rising and falling on the back of Kelly Zutrau's charming vocal. Concerning only highs and lows, the desire to leave is set perilously against the need to stay, Zutrau crushing on lines like, "You hardly know me", then shifting gears into the title lyric, "Baby, you're the best", before closing with, "Maybe we should quit while we're ahead." The deeply modern counterfactual of the roads unchosen, the paralyzing world of choice, a multiplicity of unknown joys and miseries, the places we know the best becoming the places we most need to evacuate.