Water From Your Eyes – ‘It’s a Beautiful Place’ album review: Harnessing the 21st century’s songbook in spectacular fashion
There’s a confounding majesty that shines throughout It’s a Beautiful Place, the seventh album from indie pop deconstructivists Water From Your Eyes.
The first since 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed‘s critical breakthrough, the Brooklyn-based core duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown have once again captured their unique gift for reaching into popular music’s myriad genre grab bag and smattering their artful alt rock with sonic clashes that shouldn’t work on paper but collide like kaleidoscopic fireworks on their latest LP with Matador Records.
One tries in vain to avoid the term ‘postmodern’. It’s a Beautiful Place’s ten cuts either strike, stroll, or gracefully soar out of the speakers with a degree of affection that never feels iconoclastic or self-satisfied in its calculations, but Water From Your Eyes indeed careen around an eclectic sonic terrain that masterfully crumples disparate genres, skewed arrangements, and juttering rhythms into an affecting and cohesive whole which never collapses into a hectic mess.
It’s a curious feat. It’s a Beautiful Place expertly feeds a vast array of styles into its aural processor in such an incongruous flair that, rather than merely rustling up a web of idiosyncratic genre fusions, the musical flavours they so evidently love are harnessed on a deeper, essential level.
One moment, there’s an unmistakable shoegaze engulf despite no wall of guitar effects, later the euphoric glisten of club donk gleaming behind nonchalant post-punk, or an attacking blast of metal crunch that lies on a molecular foundation with giddy indie spright. Water From Your Eyes revel in their ungovernable, unclassifiable experiments, but their pop assemblages are always inviting, the pair scooching up to offer you a seat in their synthpop waltzer ride.
Such a sonic vantage of bustling musical parts also orchestrates a sweeping range of emotive valleys. Along their abstract productions, angular grooves barge beside languid dreampop shuffles to heavy rock blister and anthemic stir across It’s a Beautiful Place’s terse and focused length. Such creative turbulence is anchored in a smart refinement courtesy of Amos’ electronic sculptures and Brown’s unflappable vocals, sparkling with low-key authority against their wry yet playfully belligerent lyrics.
Vibrating with dazzling ingenuity and effortless character, It’s a Beautiful Place sees Water From Your Eyes score another captivating and joyous appraisal of the 21st-century songbook, conjuring a radiant and shimmering artpop marvel that mirrors the contemporary fog of trepidation and confusion but points to a way forward rather than getting lost in its fumbling bustle.
Defining track: ‘Nights in Armor’ – So many dimensions of aural burst and snaking instruments, it’s difficult to keep up with its bristling wonder. Glorious explosion of crackling country-twang post-rock peppered with spicy imps of atonal synth birdsongs from another planet.
For fans of: Children’s toy road mats
A concluding comment from the rave UFO: “Wait till the guys at Zerkron-4 hear about this!?”
Release: August 22nd | Producer: Nate Amos | Label: Matador Records
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