‘Your favourite album is not as cool as any dinosaur': set sail with New York art rock duo Water From Your Eyes

The Guardian

6 hours ago

On a breezy May evening, the New York-based art rock duo Water From Your Eyes are several hours into their annual boat show. It's a delightful jaunt down the East River that raises questions such as: who from your local music scene would you save in a Titanic scenario? Tipsy people totter across the Liberty Belle's promenade decks, some partaking in the loosie cigarettes and poppers available for purchase. A magician is somewhere on board, blowing minds with sleight of hand tricks. Below deck, the band's Rachel Brown and Nate Amos seem to have found their sea legs: a mosh pit erupts as they rip into Life Signs, the playfully proggy lead single from their forthcoming album, It's a Beautiful Place.
The band treat the annual excursion began a bit of a joke, albeit one they have actively participated in for three years. Sometimes it feels as if WFYE is all about pulling off harebrained ideas. 'Nothing is more of a letdown in a creative scenario than achieving exactly what you set out to make,' says Amos. 'Where's the fun in that?' So, the next day, we head to the woods upstate. The band are noted Red Hot Chili Peppers fans and Brown, who studied film-making in college and makes videos for peers such as dance punks Model/Actriz, is directing a video for new song Playing Classics – a dance track inspired by Life Without Buildings and Charli xcx – that pays homage to the By the Way video. After following a long dirt road plastered with 'do not enter' signs, we end up talking to a confused shopkeeper in a trailer filled with fireworks. 'Do you know the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Not, like, personally,' Brown asks earnestly. 'Can I show you a video and you tell me the best way to recreate it?'
Adventurousness and commitment to the bit is central to the WFYE ethos. Since forming in 2016, the duo have relished in twisting simple concepts towards playful ends. Brown and Amos started making music together – and dating – while living in Chicago back in 2016. Inspired by New Order, they made melancholic dance music, albeit written 'from the perspectives of animals and background movie characters,' says Brown. No longer romantically involved by 2019, the pair were living in Brooklyn and performing regularly at DIY spots, experiences that encouraged them to make bolder choices. As Brown says: 'Nate started bringing in 15-minute collages instead of little pop songs.' Their 2021 breakthrough, Structure, was a meticulously chaotic assemblage of glitchy post-punk, solemn orchestrals and Brown's impressionistic poetry. Rolling Stone wrote: 'The music they make is so shot through with the discordant energy of feeling hopelessly stuck in this miserable moment, yet it never strays far from the maxim: You gotta laugh.'
It's a Beautiful Place is the band's second record with venerable indie label Matador. It is the band's most guitar-forward record yet, a natural consequence of the extensive touring behind its predecessor, 2023's Everyone's Crushed and an expanded live outfit, courtesy of guitarist Al Nardo and drummer Bailey Wollowitz, who play together as Fantasy of a Broken Heart. 'Once we had a rock band together, it was like, OK, we can make a rock album now,' Amos says. 'Almost every song has a guitar solo, which would have felt ridiculous in the environment that Everyone's Crushed was made in.'
Everyone's Crushed was born from an exceptionally bleak time for the duo. When Black Lives Matter protests proliferated in 2020, says Brown, it 'felt revolutionary. I genuinely thought we would see real changes regarding equity and equality.' But by 2021, they were exhausted and disillusioned, back to working long hours assisting on film sets. Meanwhile, Amos was prolifically creative during lockdown but struggling with sobriety from alcohol and other substances – the bulk of Everyone's Crushed was made during a relapse. Amos laughs when recalling how he recorded the album on 'a broken computer held together by a USB cable,' a fitting setup for the album full of uncanny electronic squall addressing alienation, consumerism and suburban decay.
While basking in the mysteries of Stonehenge after a UK tour in 2022, Amos challenged himself to take a break from smoking weed. Back home, he wrote a 'delayed recovery album' which became the first full-length from his solo project, This Is Lorelei – 2024's Box for Buddy, Box for Star. Heartfelt and compulsively melodic, it's a gem of whacked-out, country-tinged pop songwriting distinct from WFYE: 'Singing about feelings is such a different headspace than shredding on electric guitar,' he says.
Most of the musical ideas on It's a Beautiful Place originate from the same prolific period as Everyone's Crushed, arranged in a very different way. 'I'm very happy to no longer be the person who was wasted, making music for 14 hours a day,' says Amos. 'But I am also very grateful to that person.' Likening his role to that of an editor, Amos manipulates and distils the demos he made back then until they land somewhere beguilingly obtuse and disquietingly catchy. 'We're still releasing our five-year blended malts,' he jokes. 'Wait until that shit's sat on a dusty hard drive for a decade, there's gonna be some crazy tasting notes.'
Recorded in Amos's home studio, the freaky, full-bodied rock songs Nights in Armor and Born 2 gesture at humanity's cosmic insignificance. 'When I sat down to write the lyrics, it just so happened that we both were thinking about cosmic existentialism,' Brown says. 'But maybe we always do that. We're both very aware of time, I think because we're Capricorns.' The duo cite pre-human geological history, the vast unknowns of space and sea, and the deep hue of International Klein Blue as touchstones. 'My working mindset for this album was 'your favourite indie rock album is not as cool as any dinosaur,'' adds Amos. In a nice full-circle moment, he finished mixing the record near Stonehenge, at a hotel overlooking a statue of Bigfoot.
Both agree that It's a Beautiful Place is the most optimistic Water From Your Eyes project yet, a representation of the band's omnivorous spirit. 'Without hope there's only defeat, and I don't believe that that's where we should land,' says Brown. 'I think that humanity and the planet are worth fighting for because we've been gifted such a beautiful place.'
It's a Beautiful Place is released via Matador on 22 August