WET KISS Release Janky Piano Ballad-Turn-Rock Opera ‘Chick From Nowhere’

Rising queer punk outfit Wet Kiss today share Chick From Nowhere as one last taste of their forthcoming album ‘Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse’, out June 27 via Dinosaur City Records.

Chick From Nowhere is a janky piano ballad (of pianist Aldo, Brenna affectionately calls them the “Barry Manilow to my Bette Midler”), that descends into a full-blown rock opera. It’s about picking up lovers in the early morning, relishing the freedom of being an unknown entity in an unknown city. The melody was written back in Melbourne, the band high on ecstasy and suddenly eager to write a really tight pop song. “It’s not really a standard pop song at all,” laughs Brenna, “it’s more of a rock saloon song.”

‘Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse’ is exactly what the title suggests. Our chanteuse here is the sensational jezebel Brenna O: Part Factory Girl, part Fassbinder heroine, all peroxide locks and shiny, skin-tight “$2 dresses”, sneering and growling across the stage, mixing greasy punk with cabaret excess. What is she saying? Well, a few things. Produced by Andrew Huhtanen McEwan, ‘Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse’ is about the grubby pleasures of hopping on the Melbourne-to-Berlin artist pipeline. It’s about “daddy at the abattoir,” slaughtering piggies. It’s about gloomy waits at the gender clinic so you can get your estrogen. It’s about dingy, crap clubs, desolate glamour, strutting down the street with your dignity in tatters, upskirting, indulgence and the glory of turning fantasy into reality. The album name is also something of a joke, melding a music journalist’s snide comment about the band (“broken chanteuse”) with a nod to Nietzsche’s ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’.

The story of Wet Kiss is the story of myth-turned-real. Brenna knew what she wanted — glam-rock mutated for the adderall age — she just needed to find the players. So she put out ads in local rock magazines and found them: daniel dog (guitar), Al Amour (piano), Ben Addiction (bass), Ju Sugar (lead guitar), Ruby Rabbit (drums) and Agnes Wailin’ (dubbed ‘Screamin’’ for their tenacious vocal belts). The band quickly moved in together, quickly put out their beguiling debut record ‘She’s So Cool’, and quickly built a live reputation. Their performances left crowds gobsmacked: there were floppy bunny ears and buckets of sweat; costume changes and clothes ripped to smithereens; ecstatic howls and hilarious antagonism.

Plenty of ‘Thus Spoke The Broken Chanteuse’ is brimming with this tension – between the hedonistic triumph of inventing oneself, and the dreary texture of modern life. Brenna became well acquainted with this conflict during a long stint in Berlin. Much of the record was written there, and as such, many of the songs are slathered in a thick glob of Weimar decadence. “I want to carry on that spirit of dirty street decadence, but also the great tradition of self-invention,” says Brenna.

Wet Kiss catapulted onto the scene with the release of their debut album ‘She’s So Cool’ via Dero Arcade (cumgirl8, Divide & Dissolve) in 2022. In a somewhat shock move, Olver and daniel dog relocated to Berlin just a month after the album dropped. When plans of their 2024 return became public (alongside whispers of a new record), a frenzy was ignited with fans and media alike. In the nine months since, Wet Kiss have played Melbourne Town Hall for RISING’s sold-out DAY TRIPPER festival alongside Bar Italia and HTRK, showcased at SXSW Sydney and made their ‘Sup debut for Golden Plains alongside PJ Harvey and Fontaines D.C. On top of that, they’ve scored support slots with Amyl & the Sniffers, RVG, Spike F*ck, CIVIC, Floodlights and Private Function. This momentum has been bolstered by critical acclaim from influential outlets like Bandcamp, Beat Magazine, Rolling Stone, Gusher Magazine, BBC 6, WFMU, 3RRR, PBS and fbi.radio, among others.