In 2025, human existence on Earth is somewhat nonsensical – one look at the news headlines makes this clear. In their first album since their breakthrough release, Everything’s Crushed (2023), Brooklyn-based duo Water From Your Eyes respond to this state of affairs with cautious but optimistic existentialism, namechecking Ween as influences on their ironic, rather absurdist approach to music-making.
In lead single ‘Life Signs’, vocalist Rachel Brown mumbles, subdued, “It’s so sad in this beautiful place” before reversing their view with “The world is a paradise” later on in ‘Born 2’ – and there are musical contradictions here too. One of these is that Brown’s laconic vocal style is understated compared to the accompanying music from producer and guitarist Nate Amos, whose blend of trippy electronic effects and subterranean guitar create a surreal, otherworldly soundscape.
The first and last tracks on the album, ‘One Small Step’ and ‘For Mankind’, are almost identical, their disorientating electronic chirps and swirls lending an ambient formlessness to the record’s extremities. Other textured soundscapes include ‘You Don’t Believe In God?’ and ‘It’s A Beautiful Place’, the former a peaceful interlude full of shifting synths and the latter a distorted solo guitar instrumental, both ethereal in their own ways. Yet another style change comes with ‘Playing Classics’, released as a single in July, where the album peaks. It’s driven by a pulsating techno beat under an appealing piano jangle and Brown’s deadpan vocals: an alternative dancefloor anthem.
It’s telling that, since 2022, the duo have been accompanied by guitarist Al Nardo and drummer Bailey Wollowitz when playing live, peaking with a support slot for Interpol at their largest concert to date, in Mexico City last year. You can hear this expansion in the fuller instrumentation of this album compared to their previous LP: the fuller dimensions of tracks such as ‘Born 2’ and ‘Blood On The Dollar’ must have been crafted with live performances in mind – even though we’re told that they were recorded in Amos’s bedroom.
Water From Your Eyes can’t be confined to a single genre; It’s A Beautiful Place is an amalgamation of directions, culminating in a product that is lyrically existential, sonically experimental and eerily extraterrestrial.
