{"id":89062,"date":"2025-08-22T16:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89062\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T16:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:03:09","slug":"water-from-your-eyes-its-a-beautiful-place-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89062\/","title":{"rendered":"Water From Your Eyes, \u201cIt\u2019s A Beautiful Place\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALBUM OF THE DAY<\/a><\/p>\n

Water From Your Eyes, \u201cIt\u2019s A Beautiful Place\u201d<\/p>\n

By <\/p>\n

Stuart Berman<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00b7
\n August 22, 2025<\/p>\n

\u200b<\/p>\n

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Water From Your Eyes<\/a>\u2019s 2023 sophomore release, Everyone\u2019s Crushed<\/a>, was a veritable art-pop pi\u00f1ata exploding with dizzying grooves, destabilizing noises, and nonsensical numerology<\/a>. For singer Rachel Brown and multi-instrumentalist\/producer Nate Amos, the aftershocks rippled far and wide. The album appeared on numerous year-end lists<\/a>, and spawned an all-star remix collection<\/a>. The duo got to open for their Matador<\/a> labelmates Interpol<\/a> at Mexico City\u2019s Z\u00f3calo\u2014aka the show that drew 160,000 people<\/a>\u2014which technically makes them the first Matador act to ever play for a crowd of 160,000 people. (They also got tapped to play Paul Banks\u2019s wedding.) Meanwhile, Amos enjoyed a breakthrough of his own with his long-running This Is Lorelei<\/a> project, and Brown landed a fun side hustle as Stereogum\u2019s new resident Narduwar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But as Brown pointed out recently on the Music Person podcast<\/a>, high visibility is still no reliable measure of economic security. \u201cWhen Everyone\u2019s Crushed came out, we made it onto so many lists,\u201d they recounted, \u201cand I was like, \u2018Whoa, we did such a good job\u2026and I\u2019m broke.\u2019 Our music doesn\u2019t really sound like a lot of stuff.\u201d It\u2019s a Beautiful Place<\/a> seems to reflect the duality of their whirlwind existence: Water From Your Eyes\u2019s third album is exuberant and excitable on the surface, yet wounded at its core.<\/p>\n

Fittingly for a record that\u2019s bookended by an identical pair of surreal soundscapes referencing the moon landing (\u201cOne Small Step\u201d and \u201cFor Mankind\u201d), It\u2019s a Beautiful Place sees Brown hovering above the chaos, calmly suspended in zero gravity. But as the duo\u2019s multitasking musical architect, Amos is entrusted with building the fantastical shapeshifting environments in which Brown can wield their ennui like a superpower. \u201cI\u2019m unfulfilled\/ I\u2019m in a beautiful place\/ Yeah, it\u2019s so sad\/ In this beautiful place,\u201d they declare in their signature sing-spiel on lead single \u201cLife Signs.\u201d To which Amos responds: Perhaps a slack rap-rock track tricked out with a hellbound math-metal riff and a Stereolab cocktail-pop chorus will cheer you up?<\/p>\n

\u201cLife Signs\u201d exemplifies the upside of lagging behind your more popular peers\u2014i.e., the freedom to do whatever the hell you want\u2014and with It\u2019s a Beautiful Place, the duo forsake any latent commercial-crossover ambitions and double down on their commitment to gunking up the algorithm. While \u201890s revivalism continues to steer the indie-rock conversation in 2025\u2014be it through fuzz-pop flashbacks<\/a>, lo-fi sing-alongs<\/a>, Silver Jews influences<\/a>, or a never-ending shoegaze wave<\/a>\u2014Water From Your Eyes descend from the decade\u2019s less-celebrated alterna-lineage. Namely, a post-Odelay boho playground where thrifty genre-smashing acts like Cibo Matto could land multi-page fashion spreads in Teen People<\/a> and the Butthole Surfers<\/a> could spin spoken-word absurdity into a Top 40 hit<\/a>. At once bolder and more bizarre than its predecessor, It\u2019s a Beautiful Place sounds precisely like the sort of album made by some weirdo New York band who got scooped up by Elektra in 1996 during the dying days of the post-Nevermind signing frenzy and were promised complete creative freedom by the A&R guy who got laid off a week after the album came out.<\/p>\n

In essence, Water From Your Eyes have moved on from merely counting mountains<\/a> to shifting tectonic plates, as tracks like \u201cNights in Armor\u201d and \u201cSpaceship\u201d emerge from earthquaking collisions of broken-beatbox rhythms and disorienting textures. But just as the pawn-shop house workout \u201cPlaying Classics\u201d hits peak delirium, Amos strips the arrangement down to a solitary acoustic-guitar echo of the song, reminding us that Water From Your Eyes\u2019s scatterbrained sound design is always undergirded by a sturdy melody you could pull out at an open-mic night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Beautiful Place shrewdly counterbalances its gonzo gestures with more unfettered displays of Water From Your Eyes\u2019s songwriting savvy, like \u201cBorn 2,\u201d a blissful, blown-out blast of distorto-pop that suggests My Bloody Valentine trying to write an arm-swaying Oasis anthem. And with \u201cBlood on the Dollar,\u201d a duo that once bemoaned the fact they couldn\u2019t legally interpolate a Neil Young song<\/a> opt to just write a beautifully bummed Neil Young song of their own. \u201cThese years make me spin, man\/ Motion again,\u201d Brown sighs, reiterating a deep-seated malaise that even a comforting dose of Topanga Canyon folk-rock can\u2019t fully alleviate. It\u2019s their way of saying everyone\u2019s still feeling crushed\u2014but that\u2019s only hardened Water From Your Eyes\u2019s resolve to elevate the rubble into a beautiful mess.<\/p>\n