It’s probably a weird year for an indie-rock band to be declaring “It’s a Beautiful Place.” But the duo behind Water From Your Eyes aren’t exactly known for making explicit assertions about anything, let alone the state of the world. Throughout their relatively young career, Rachel Brown and Nate Amose have packaged disillusionment and nihilism into entertaining and amusing songs with some of modern rock’s most imaginative production. Their well-received 2023 album Everyone’s Crushed helped them break through to a larger audience, and this summer’s It’s a Beautiful Place has quickly become an album contending for year-end lists in a crowded field.
It’s a collection of innovative rock and pop songs investigating this difficult moment in time for musicians, along with existential dread that anybody and everybody can relate to. There’s an expansive range of electronic and analog sounds that cement the band’s (sub)genre-defying reputation. It’s a sonic versatility that makes their current tour all the more intriguing as they quickly sold out their Thursday night date at Sleeping Village. Additional intrigue was added that afternoon when it was announced that their record is under Grammy consideration.
Their wry humor is an asset without being the focal point, and it’s delivered with the perfect deadpan vocals of Rachel Brown. She manages to sneak a few zingers into every song without ever being overly acerbic, and never vulgar. Along with contemporaries Jockstrap and Chanel Beads, Water From Your Eyes traffic in enigma while peppering their albums with occasional beauty. Their genre? Honestly, who knows… If you’re the type of person who can tell the difference between art rock and experimental pop, chances are you’ve already listened to Water From Your Eyes and didn’t need a selling point to check out a Pitchfork-minted band from Brooklyn.
The band formed in Chicago in the mid-2010s, but they decamped for Brooklyn early in their career and have largely been associated with that scene. The band has been quietly prolific, with already a number of LPs to their name, along with various EPs and remix albums. Producer and guitarist Nate Amos has gained notoriety for his This is Lorelei project, and Rachel Brown has been busy cultivating her public persona on social media by interviewing other artists for Stereogum. There’s an expanding universe of art and content surrounding the duo that is reminiscent of the vast catalog of Animal Collective. The comparison might also apply to the music itself. Water From Your Eyes and the psych-pop elder statesmen both cultivate similarly far-out textures and have the same collaborative agreement, where any and all ideas are explored.
It’s a Beautiful Place has certainly enjoyed a critical consensus often associated with a leveling-up. While their (again) self-produced new record is their second release on Matador, it’s the first one written and recorded knowing it would be released on the legendary “major indie” label. Eschewing the customary jump in production budget, much of the record was made in Nate Amos’s bedroom. The band seems to be snickering at success while their output absolutely meets the moment.
Openers This House Is Creaking brought a mix of dreamy shoegaze and grunge that’ll make (older) listeners reach for some Smashing Pumpkins deep cuts. Next up were Philly band Her New Knife, who whipped up dense guitar rock with a similar fuzz to the first band, but with punchier beats. Sleeping Village does a better job than most venues of packing it in without overselling, and there were solid crowds for both openers, which is unsurprising given how popular that specific flavor of indie music has become in recent years.
After the brief instrumental (that may or may not feature a didgeridoo) “For Mankind”, Water From Your Eyes launched into the shoegaze-y “Born 2.” This is one of the most overtly rock songs in their catalog, and the venue-ready guitar fuzz and energetic drumming got the band off to a solid start. Their recorded songs are dotted with sample-heavy electronic interludes, including the Stereolab-esque blips and bloops of “Structure” and string arrangements of “You Don’t Believe in God?” But these were cast aside in favor of Amos’s deft guitar playing. Amos, never pegged as a guitar god, can absolutely shred. His intricate soloing and inventive use of effects recreated the varied digital samples and electronic instrumentation you find on the albums. “Barley” came next, and was greeted like an old favorite despite the song being a few years old. Glitchy stop-and-start samples mingle with Brown’s stolid counting and repeating of cryptic lyrics. The band wound up the song wholly, just to unravel it in a crescendo of fuzzy riffs and bludgeoning percussion.
The first time I saw Water From Your Eyes play live was at Pitchfork in 2024. The on-stage banter was particularly hilarious as Rachel Brown recalled a summer where she snuck into the festival as a teenager, even going so far as to blame the bad karma as the reason for getting sick and losing her voice. Thursday’s performance had the same irreverence, just with fewer confessions. The singer did admit to various personal milestones like birthdays and parents-currently-in-attendance, perhaps qualifying it as a sorta-hometown show. On stage, Brown wanders around, intermittently latching onto the beat or delivering dialogue that forces the audience to figure out just how funny these oblique lyrics are in a world intent on burning. It’s an almost mopey schtick that she pulls off as compelling. Amos and the other musicians are more animated, but the band’s stage presence is muted in favor of vibes and killer psychedelic visuals.
There's a sprawling sonic palette that is impressive for a band as fresh as Water From Your Eyes. There's not an exact wheelhouse where you can fit most of their songs into. While their live performances are more based around guitars (this is undoubtedly a rock show), their wide range of tones and themes was still more than evident. Hypnotic but danceable, “Out There” marries sludgy bass with industrial beats while Brown, stubbornly taciturn, delivers perplexing lyrics even by her lofty standards. “Life Signs” features the heaviest guitars on any Water From Your Eyes song, along with a mix of pretty vocals and pseudo-rapping reminiscent of bands like Cake (yes, them). “Quotation” offered a glimmer of beauty for beauty’s sake, which is a change of pace for a band intent on befuddling and amusing its audience. Ethereal vocal samples surround Brown's prettiest singing of the night while shimmery distorted chords wash over the crowd.
“Blood on the Door” is a straightforward indie-rock song, with bittersweet vocals and autumnal guitar riffs. “Playing Classics” finds the band mining the artier side of dance music, with bone-dry percussion keeping time for intertwining bouncy guitars and Brown’s vocals. She sounded like someone looking around at a dance party, utterly unimpressed. The beat ends up allowing viscous guitar riffs to take over for a while. “When You’re Around” sounds like a Weyes Blood ballad. The crowd, lulled by the dreaminess of baroque-pop and Brown's most tender vocals of the night, was shaken awake by industrial blasts and drone of “Track Five.” The juxtaposition fully demonstrates the range Water From Your Eyes possesses, along with their prowess as performers. This deeper cut was a good way to cap off the show, especially considering the tracks from It’s a Beautiful World might soon monopolize future setlists.
There’s not much in Water From Your Eyes' discography that would suggest these guys would rock half as hard as they did on Thursday, which is an encouraging sign should they adopt jammier tendencies. There seems to be an inflection point about to happen in the band’s career. It’s plainly obvious that rooms like Sleeping Village (though an amazing venue) can’t accommodate the demand for their shows moving forward. Their next projects will have loftier expectations, but they’ve been on a solid streak for a few albums at this point. A Grammy nod might shift the vibe, for better or worse. But Water From Your Eyes have shrugged off triumph before, and they might find this one to be the most amusing yet.
