Sugar, I’m Tired (8/17/23, Substitute Scene Records) is the debut album from Brooklyn-based indie rock band Wetsuit, the project of songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Allison Becker, accompanied by guitarist Anders Nils, bassist Paul DeSilva, and drummer Stephen Cadieux.

In a quarantine origin story, Becker was stuck at her parents’ midwestern home in March 2020 when she pulled her abandoned Squier strat out of the closet. With a desperate need for emotional release as a 30 year old unexpectedly living with her parents again, combined with some Zoom guitar lessons, Becker began writing songs for the first time. Becker returned to Brooklyn after a summer spent writing songs on the floor of her childhood bedroom, armed with the beginnings of Sugar, I’m Tired. Back in Brooklyn she assembled a band, collaborating with Nils, DeSilva and Cadieux to turn her DIY compositions into a true rock outfit. Wetsuit became friendly faces in the Brooklyn indie scene, playing shows nonstop around New York City starting in the fall of 2021.

Wetsuit’s songs build with longing, never losing the purity of Becker’s bedroom-songwriting within the crashing and surfy echo of her bandmates’ backdrop. Becker’s dynamic voice of tenderness and passion takes notes from a teenagehood of listening to Regina Spektor in the indie kid aughts, and moving towards crispy country ranges of contemporary poet-songster, Adrianne Lenker. With Becker’s folksy vocals in contrast, Nils’ lead guitar compliments the vocal melodies almost as if it’s a second vocalist in the band. Wetsuit’s blending of genres shows appreciation for shoegazey blissed-out moods and the ballad song structures of 90s alternative.

Like turning the scrawled pages of a diary, Sugar, I’m Tired confronts old lovers and desires of the past. Some songs’ lyrics come straight from Becker’s poems about her lived experiences with heartbreak and love, against the reality of New York City streets and smells. The first track “Sugar” exhibits the exhaustion of performing femininity for men’s expectations, with a churning chorus that gives the album its name. Becker’s voice dances around as the ballerina in a neat bow she tries to be, yet the whooshing and slamming instrumentals come through, the hair on her legs growing back. In Wetsuit’s narratives, sincerity always wins.

“Clovers” surges the simplicity of a two-chord love song and the power of laying in bed with the one you love in the afternoon. The lush sounds imitate a release of closeness and contentment. Wetsuit’s songs often juxtaposes dreamlike elements with mundane city life: turning into jello in a grassy field, walking home together after the bars close.

Sugar, I’m Tired is pinned down by steady, faithful rhythms, as the tracks dig through the ups and downs of breaking up, getting back together, and waiting around. Nils’ pedal-heavy riffs draw bright strands of melodic themes, while a washed-up “local celebrity” boyfriend is inattentive and cruel. Becker’s belted yet controlled vocals always curl around; a twirling telephone cord, waiting for a call, like a doowoop song. In “Polka Dots,” Becker croons to a codependent relationship, listing the elements of an apartment’s shell: mice in the walls, a polka dot patterned comforter. These everyday details create a map of the story, the closed-in rooms where longing grows. Wetsuit’s dynamics take us to rippling high points, then slowdowns as if out of breath.

Sugar, I’m Tired introduces Wetsuit’s strengths of warm and soaring rock compositions, a musical balm. In this stunning debut, Wetsuit cements themselves as one of Brooklyn’s best up and coming indie rock outfits.

Bio written by Delia Rainey