While Water From Your Eyes have always been unapologetically offbeat, the latest addition to their discography, new album ‘It’s A Beautiful Place’, is without a doubt their most avant-garde offering yet. Laden with an abundance of experimental sound, it’s a puzzle for the ears to piece together.
Long-time collaborators Rachel Brown and Nate Amos first formed the band in Chicago in 2016. They have since proved themselves to be some of the most prolific and innovative creators in modern music. Their seventh album in just eight years is a space-age cacophony that veers off in innumerable different directions within every track.
With such a varied back catalogue behind them, it was anyone’s guess what focus they would take with their next album. The answer? Everything and nothing all at once. Following a brief opening instrumental ‘One Small Step’, second track ‘Life Signs’ is a heavy, riff-led number. It borders in patches on thrash metal, before cascading into a chorus with a neo-psychedelic feel. Brown’s vocals are conflictingly soft, beginning with muttered, deadpan spoken word and finishing on an airy, dream-pop note.
Such is the heady, all-engulfing soup of noise, it could reasonably go unnoticed that several of the album’s tracks have no vocals; rather than taking centre stage as is commonplace, they are simply one of the many elements in the hectic sound profile. Track five, ‘You don’t believe in God?’ offers a welcome break for the ears that is peaceful yet weighty with its angelic, orchestral instrumentals. With an abrupt stop, it acts as a launchpad into ‘Spaceship,’ which employs reversed string instrumentals and irregular beats to build an apocalyptic sense of impending doom. Monotone vocals chant ritualistic lyrics, offering some level of uniformity among the chaos. At other points, it’s barely discernible when one track flows into the next.
The more minimal ‘Playing Classics’ is as close as Water From Your Eyes come to mainstream conformity, though it’s still a far stretch from radio-friendly. With a steady, up-tempo beat and a trance-like atmosphere, the track is a must for every underground club DJ’s radar.
With its relatively compact overall length, but tracks varying wildly from 30 seconds to six minutes, it’s an album to be listened to in order, with intention, the way the artists crafted it. To call ‘It’s A Beautiful Place’ music would be doing it a disservice; the album is a multi-dimensional, cinematic artwork that demands full sensory attention of its listener.
‘It’s A Beautiful Place’ is out now via Matador.
