Jerry's Pick: "Deadwater"

"DEADWATER"-WET

A great majority of the songs that actively rotate in my iTunes library are decidedly uptempo tunes.  For a "ballad" to be included within my personal playlist, it has to be especially remarkable.

As you can imagine, a huge chunk of pop music falls into the "break-up song" category, but very few come across as emotional and heart-wrenching as "Deadwater," the lead-off track from the yet-to-be-released debut album (Don't You) from the Massachusetts trio Wet.

Lead-vocalist Kelly Zutrau delicately sings the part from the viewpoint of a heart that has been badly broken beyond repair.  As she tells her story, you come to understand that everything was done to make this relationship work but has painfully come to the conclusion that she had no other choice but to move on.

And yet she can't help but always wonder, "If..."

Even when she concludes, "There are better things for me," you sense in her voice that she's much more hopeful than optimistic.

For those of us with broken-hearts still in a state of repair, "Deadwater" -- with its perfectly produced piano-based backing-track set underneath Kelly's poignantly pensive poetry -- will surely resonate.  It's that powerful.

"Deadwater" will be part of Wet's first full-length major label album (via Columbia) and is due out this Autumn.

Jerry's Pick: "Sea Creatures"

“SEA CREATURES”-SOAK

Every so often your ears are treated to a sound that stands apart from the vast majority of the crap cranked-out by the star making machinery of the recording industry.

“Sea Creatures” is a song that conjures up images of a tortured, vulnerable and alienated soul dealing with unrequited love in a world that makes little sense featuring lyrics that seem to be taken straight from the pages of someone’s personal diary.  (“You don’t deserve this, and I won’t put up with their ignorance when they tell you they love you.  Well… they don’t mean it.”)

The words and music come from Bridie Monds-Watson, an 18-year old singer-songwriter-guitarist from Northern Ireland who performs under the moniker SOAK (apparently because her music falls somewhere between “soul” and “folk”).  Although the song will be part of her very first album (Before We Forgot How to Dream) due out next month, she actually wrote “Sea Creatures” at 14, an age when most of us were dealing with feelings we didn’t understand and thoughts we didn’t know how to convey.  (“I don’t know what to say… it might make you worse.”)

The wonderfully orchestrated “Sea Creatures” — most likely a metaphor for all of those people outside our bubble looking in — is painfully honest and whole-heartedly melancholy and seems to be a message of concern to someone important to her.  And that’s what good music does… conveys emotion.  But as she pointed out to The Guardian, “I am really not a dark or depressed person — I’m from a very happy family…” explaining, “I happen to write easier when I'm angry or sad, but I know from watching other musicians that you want more than that.”

Bridie is extremely charming as she doesn’t attempt to hide her Irish accent or who she really is,  and her voice is still adorably adolescent (especially while singing “…I think she’s just a fish”) which for some may seem out of sorts when dealing with observations most often considered adult.  And I give her additional bonus-points for growing-up a fan of Joni Mitchell and especially for blowing all of her first gig’s paycheck on vinyl records!

I feel this will be the start of a long musical career for BMW.  Although this teen-poet prefers to go by SOAK, I still think Bridie is much more pretty.