It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? How sometimes the most profound, even unsettling, feelings can be wrapped up in a joke. For Water From Your Eyes, the duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, humor isn't just a coping mechanism; it's practically a language. They’ve spoken about how songs like “Barley” or “Remember Not My Name” strike them as utterly hilarious, even when those tracks are dissecting complex mathematical-philosophical puzzles or the raw vulnerability of infatuation. And Nate Amos even went so far as to declare that he realized “guitar is actually really funny,” especially in the context of a solo. It’s this delightful paradox that seems to fuel their latest offering, It’s a Beautiful Place.
Listening to Water From Your Eyes is like being in a conversation with two incredibly sharp, slightly mischievous friends who also happen to be musical savants. They’re the kind of people who can pull off comparisons to Cake, Sting, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, not as a direct lineage, but as a nod to their own wonderfully eclectic approach. Their music is a wild ride, a deliberate piling up of styles – industrial dance here, microtonal composition there, all held together by an uncanny ability to balance the accessible with the utterly experimental. It’s antic, it’s turbulent, and it’s often hiding a deep well of emotion behind a dazed grin.
It’s a Beautiful Place marks a shift from the pandemic-tinged anxieties of their previous album, Everyone’s Crushed. While that record delved into darker territory, this new one is, on the surface at least, more upbeat, more energized. Take “Life Signs,” for instance. It kicks off the album with a jolt, their most intense song to date, built on jagged power chords and a disorienting 5/4 time signature that might remind you of deconstructionist bands like Shudder to Think. Rachel Brown’s vocals here shift from a drawn-out, almost rap-rock cadence to something akin to Stereolab’s cool, angelic tones in the chorus. The lyrics are cryptic, as always – “What’s on the record/Life in a small town/Fifth and a first sound” – but the feeling, combined with Amos’s jazz-infused harmonies, is undeniably life-affirming.
They’ve got this knack for packing so much into a few tracks. On Structure, their 2021 release, they proved that three perfect songs could define an entire side of an LP. They seem to be doing it again here. “Nights in Armor” is a prime example, morphing from Sarah Records-esque indie pop to something more metal-adjacent, then veering into atonal skronk. “Born 2” is another journey, a track that feels like climbing an Escherian staircase of shifting keys, culminating in moments of pure, fist-pumping triumph. Even when the lyrics touch on political themes, as they do here, the meaning remains wonderfully elusive, a puzzle box of possibilities like “Born to become/Something else/Something melts,” punctuated by Brown’s repeated, almost chilling, declaration of “psychopath.”
The second half of the album continues this pattern, but one track, “Playing Classics,” really steals the show. It’s a madcap dance-punk romp, apparently partly inspired by Charli XCX. Its sheer ebullience is almost startling, a glorious mismatch of disco hi-hats, Eurodance basslines, bright keys, and an overdriven guitar solo. It’s the album’s most utopian sentiment, “Practice shake it you’re free,” and it’s easy to see why it might become a live staple. While I personally lean towards the A-side, there’s no denying its infectious energy and its status as, in Amos’s words, the album’s funniest song. Even the B-side opener, “Spaceship,” continues the sonic adventure with its backmasked guitars and shifting time signatures, offering a feel that’s… well, you’ll have to hear it to truly understand.
