Nate Amos and Rachel Brown continue to pleasingly confound with Water From Your Eyes. The Brooklyn outfit mashes up a few genres on their new one, It's a Beautiful Place, and the results are oddly charming. This new one on Matador may be their best yet.
"Life Signs" crunches on hard riffs and then coasts on cooing vocals from Rachel. The juxtaposition recalls that band Toenut on Mute, surprisingly. Elsewhere, "Nights in Armor" is a jittery delight, busy guitar chords circling vocals lost deep in a mix. It's wonderful. Water From Your Eyes do this kind of thing with ease, even with enough grace to not make this feel at all like some forced sonic experiment. Still, the numbers which work best for me are ones like "Born 2", where things get all crunchy, the vocals go dreamy, and the whole affair rings with the kind of beautiful chaos I found on early Swirlies sides.
What's sort of marvelous about Water From Your Eyes is the duo's agility at bridging indie with the reckless disregard of art rock. Along with Khruangbin, and Dehd, there are very few other current groups doing that sort of thing so very well. A lot have tried, but the results of It's a Beautiful Place make it clear just how spry the collision of styles can be in the hands of the right musicians. There's a kind of wit and playfulness still in the music of this pair that can do nothing but bring a smile to a listener's face.
It's a Beautiful Place by Water From Your Eyes is out now via Matador Records.
[Photo: Adam Powell]