There’s been a lot of talk about “Water From Your Eyes” new album “Everyone’s Crushed” released on Matador Records (May 26th, 2023). Here we collect all the reviews and write ups, throwing them in one convenient spot so you can see what they’re saying.
PITCHFORK
By Cat Zhang
GENRE: Rock
LABEL: Matador
REVIEWED: May 30, 2023
“The Brooklyn duo’s logic-defying new album threads anticapitalist critique, stoner humor, and a hazy undercurrent of fatalism into art-pop so mesmerizing it’ll give you a contact high.
Among rock’s underclassmen, Water From Your Eyes’ Rachel Brown and Nate Amos present like back-of-classroom slackers with drool stains on their hoodie sleeves, their minds too clogged with Vine compilations to pay attention to World History. Alongside putzing around the bowling alley and getting their minds blown by Ween, the Brooklyn art-rock duo’s primary activity seems to be smoking a gargantuan amount of weed: “There was not a single drop of work done in the recording, editing, or mixing process that was not preceded by a spliff,” Amos said of their breakout 2021 album Structure. The way they talk about their latest record, Everyone’s Crushed, makes it sound as though they fished it out from their underwear drawer: culled from pre-existing material with only a few weeks of polishing, made from a “broken $100 interface and a dying computer,” their shittiest equipment yet. They purportedly tossed it to their label with no intention of taking edits.” (more in the original post)
+rcmndedlisten
Recommended Album: Water From Your Eyes – ‘Everyone’s Crushed’
The surface level of Water From Your Eyes’ sound isn’t going to make much sense to a large part of the population, but the Brooklyn-based experimental pop duo of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos have never attempted to appeal to lowest common denominators anyway. On their late-blooming 2021 breakthrough, Structure, the pair challenged themselves to create sounds that were anything but abiding to that. In their own crack of meta wit, titling the intro track “Structure” on its follow-up (and first for Matador Records,) Everyone’s Crushed, doubles as a passage into their present expectation where, by all accounts, some semblance of form and “pop” cohesion actually does make itself visible. There’s symbolism in that. Brown and Amos are holding a mirror more focused than ever against the self, the world (and its all-consuming, capitalistic uneasiness) and onto their sound, and so their art becomes a reflection of how our experiences begin whole but become broken by forces beyond control. Everyone’s Crushed in turn attempts to put each tiny shard of mirror back together, but as we all know, you can never truly put something shattered back into its original form. That’s what makes this collection of 9 very singular tracks respective in their own prism of color, texture and energy. They’re dependent on the angle of stress they were smashed and the resulting meditation that glued them back into being part of the same shape, with Brown and Amos rummaging through their kitchen sink of instruments, from erratic synthesizers, percussion in disarray, droning guitar, and opulent strings, to mend them. Sometimes there are proportionate patterns in what your senses visualize or the degree at which they move (”Barley”, “True Life”,) and in other instances, it feels like the act of piecing everything together is a hard-earned exercise for the brain before it eventually sees outlines coming into being (”Everyone’s Crushed”, “Remember Not My Name”.) “There are no happy endings / Only things that happen,” Brown sings on its closer “Buy My Product”. There’s beauty in that realization in that when you accept everything and everyone eventually becomes their own unique version of a damaged good, it in turn becomes something beyond invaluable. Water From Your Eyes know their art need not be perfect or gloss, though they certainly use that to their advantage here on Everyone’s Crushed. Rather, it finds the right consumer who considers their sound to be something no one else could create in this timeline.
Highlights: “Barley”, “Remember Not My Name”, “Buy My Product”
LOUD AND QUIET
Water From Your Eyes
Everyone’s Crushed
(MATADOR)
8/10
Words by Jake Crossland
Water From Your Eyes have earned a reputation for trolling by clashing dumb irony up alongside genuine sincerity and musically shifting between beauty and chaos at breakneck pace. Turning on their track record, Everyone’s Crushed, their first album for Matador, sees them transform delicate synths into industrial interruption and aggressive riffs into elegant hooks, in understated fashion.
Similarly to their post-pop internet contemporaries, they take all of music’s canon at face value, disregarding snobbish critics, and fashion it into something innovative. While Jockstrap will pack songs with ideas, and 100 Gecs can pursue the joke over anything else, Rachel Brown and Nate Amos dial back to a more accessible balance. ‘True Life’ references an actual battle with Neil Young’s lawyer, but not to the extent that it overwhelms its glut of scuzzy, addictive melodies.
Where 2010s acts to whom lazy journalists might compare this group (Sleigh Bells, Dirty Projectors) spent their time adorning and complicating in the search for something novel, Water From Your Eyes instead dismantle and reassemble everything they’ve absorbed after a lifetime on the internet, and perhaps explain it best themselves on standout ‘14’: “I traced what I erased”. Gorgeous strings are looped into a rare emotional respite from the havoc elsewhere, and Brown’s vocals are genuinely affecting even while invoking vomit.
‘Out There’ is another beguiling highlight – a phone-alarm synth regularly interrupting a kinetic and aggressive bass-drum groove – and captures the best of the album. Thankfully, Everyone’s Crushed isn’t pissing anyone off despite any trollish intention. It’s honest, smart, refined – and simply excellent.
FLOOD MAGAZINE
In the Midst of Major Changes, Water From Your Eyes Are Still Finding Time to Bowl
Ahead of their debut for Matador Records, Rachel Brown and Nate Amos talk Everyone’s Crushed, changing routines, and newfound exposure—well, actually mostly just 311.
Words: MARGARET FARRELL
Photos: MARGARET FARRELL
May 02, 2023
” Water From Your Eyes, the experimental pop music duo Rachel Brown and Nato Amos, are about to play the first show of their New York City residency. But throughout our chat, the new Matador signees get most excited when recalling a 311 concert they attended last year the same week they opened for ‘90s indie icons Pavement. “Stephen Malkmus very patiently listened to us talk about 311,” Nate explains. Rachel lets out a soft laugh.
We’re tucked into the corner of a decrepit Greenpoint DIY venue that’s covered in graffiti (one earnest scribble sticks out: “Just want to be drunk enuff to cry…sorry that’s stupid”), with leopard print sound buffers hanging on the ceiling. Brown sits on an old foldout chair and Nate is next to them on a ripped leather couch. “We played [with Pavement], and then the next night we saw 311, and then the next night we saw Pavement again,” Amos continues. “So in between the first time we met Stephen Malkmus and the second time we met Stephen Malkmus, we were talking about 311.” He becomes serious for a moment as he admits, “In certain ways, it was the best live concert I’ve ever seen.”
Brown, still in awe months later, reflects: “It was the most drugged-out I’ve felt sober. It was so weird. It was just crazy. They’re crazy.” Amos cuts back in: “They’re all really good at their instruments—like, what they’re putting together doesn’t really make sense. The singer sings about how grateful he is about various things, and the emcee raps about how fucking sick 311 is.” Did Malkmus match their excitement? “No,” Brown replies. “I think he was really tired. It was the fourth show in a row. We kind of just punished him,” they laugh with a slight wheeze.
Meeting Pavement, who Rachel says is one of their favorite bands, was a good experience overall, even if they didn’t bond over feel-good rap-rock. Meanwhile, a flood of visions seemingly comes back from that night as Nate continues on about being in a Terminal 5 crowd of fans donning 311 jerseys. “That was hard to shake. I was thinking about that show for a week at least,” he says. “They did this crazy thing where there was a 10-minute drum solo during which all the crew brought out this whole drumline, like, blind tossing drum sticks—”
“We don’t even smoke weed anymore. We have meetings now…a lot of meetings.”— Rachel Brown
Rachel excitedly interjects, “Dude, they did not blind toss drum sticks.” Nate stands his ground: “Yeah they did—I thought it was my imagination, and then I looked it up online and it’s part of their routine. They do it a lot. But the craziest thing about it is that it was the third or fourth song. It was really early in the show.”
“They did? I didn’t get that on video,” Brown withdraws.
While it is true that 311 have a live drumline routine with blind tossing drumsticks, you can expect nothing that complex from Brown and Amos’ live show. They’ve stripped their live set to only the two of them—they even got rid of their amp. “We’re kind of in this constant process to streamline it and make it easier,” Amos explains. What you can expect is Amos shredding on his white guitar with “Love Feeling” scrawled across it in black duct tape while manipulating an army of pedals. Next to him is a sunglasses-wearing Brown, gripping a microphone while cooly reciting abstract lyrics. Despite their continuously minimized live setup, their presence is still engrossing. At times it sounds like demons are clawing their way out between the strings, climbing up the venue’s walls. The crowd is lost in a trance. ” (More in original post)
Rolling Stone
ALBUM REVIEW
Water From Your Eyes Slouch Toward Transcendence on ‘Everyone’s Crushed’
The avant-pop duo melds lyrical free-association with enjoyably disorienting music on their great new LP
BY KORY GROW
“WHEN WAS THE first time you heard the word ‘saccharine’?” singer Rachel Brown asks, sounding a bit like a tired Beat poet, on Water From Your Eyes’ jazzy song, “Remember Not My Name.” Like practically every lyric on the avant-pop duo’s Everyone’s Crushed – at least the ones that don’t read like free-associated stream of consciousness poetry – Brown’s question could be taken ironically.
Since forming in 2016, Water From Your Eyes have paired noisy yet winsome music with winky, tongue-in-cheek lyrics that Brown delivers in a way that can sound at once sweetly innocent and slightly devious. That vague insincerity is an acquired taste but once you’re immersed in it, it can feel almost charming. It’s the secret ingredient that made their covers album, 2021’s Somebody Else’s Songs, so enjoyable (Brown enunciates every lyric of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” dorkily-on-purpose and sings No Doubt’s “Hella Good” sorta off pitch), and it’s also what made Structure, their 2021 album of originals, strangely endearing.
As with their previous records, Everyone’s Crushed opens up like its own universe. Keyboards stutter aimlessly, then they sigh, and then Brown exhales drolly right along with them: “I just wanted to pray for the rain.” Seems harmless enough, but then Brown’s counterpart, Nate Amos, who handles all the instruments, starts trilling his keys at the beginning of “Barley” and Brown, who uses they/them pronouns, starts singing about counting mountains. It’s disorienting (literally … they sing, “West wind left to bounce” with more trills) and they even quote Sting’s “Fields of Gold” before the whole thing approximates the audial experience of melting. Amos’ synths just seem to lose form.
This chaos frequently works in the duo’s favor. “Out There” begins with funky bass and ascending synths for a good minute before Amos starts squalling his guitar and Brown speak-sings a string of single syllable nouns and verbs: “track, give, dive, slack, drag, draft, mud, scram.” Does it mean anything? It’s hard to tell with the guitar jumping between your ears, but the effect is fun. “Everyone’s Crushed” finds Brown varying the phrase “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts” (also “I’m in love with everyone and everything hurts” and “I’m with everyone I hurt and everything’s love”) over more noisy guitar loops that don’t quite match up with the rhythm. And “True Life” pulls off the stereo clanging again but pairs it with a break bit, over which Brown raps kind of like Beck in the early Nineties.
At its worst, the music on Everyone’s Crushed sounds like etudes – studies in experimentalism, finger exercises for tyros in the avant-garde. But when Water From Your Eyes find transcendence – especially on the record’s final two tracks, “14” and the extra winky “Buy My Product” – it can be quite stunning.
“14” pairs warm orchestral strings with feedback as Brown sings, “When did it start to loop?” A lot of the time, they couldn’t find the right pitch with a map, a compass, and Lewis and Clark narrating the Waze directions, but there’s something nevertheless pleasant about the way they sing. You want them to find their way and get there. And on “Buy My Product,” which features a revolving, nearly Motorik beat, Brown and Amos work together to create a multilayered meditation on which Brown snarks at the nature of art and consumerism. “Remember that there are only things that happen,” they sing. “Buy my product. Now.” Nothing saccharine about that.
·May 26, 2023
Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed (Matador)
On Everyone’s Crushed, Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes continues to carve out a distinctive path with a refreshingly original album that feels much more like a storming debut than their sixth full-length.
Nate Amos and Rachel Brown started writing music together in Chicago, 2016, over a conversation about Power, Corruption & Lies. Since then, Water From Your Eyes’ evolution has amassed a back catalogue which capably covers a ridiculously broad range of genres, from electronic dance, folk, jazz, beat poetry, indie rock and more. Their breakthrough album, 2021’s Structure, hinted at great things to come with a killer combination of silliness and fatalism intertwined with left-field pulsating rhythms and deadpan lyrics. Everyone’s Crushed feels much more than the culmination of these past releases though, with confident strides toward a sound that is uniquely their own: an electrifying bricolage of industrial polyrhythms, chunky bass lines, ambient drones, synth strings and neat microtonal mini-riffs, all sliced, diced and repurposed into unconventional song structures. In short, Everyone’s Crushed swells and swoons with an experimental sound that is both beautiful and violent, and like nothing else you will hear this year.
Across its nine contrasting tracks, a disorienting journey unfolds as cascading synthetic sounds swirl and collide with Brown’s grounded vocal, creating a mesmerising and invigorating splash of artistry. Opening vignette, ‘Structure’ sets the tone and expectation for the album, with a disjointed, dissonant synth noise circling Brown’s words: “praying for rain, wishful thinking for sunny days”. Next, the hallucinatory groove of ‘Barley’ buzzes in, arcing in seemingly random call tones like a failing electrical diode searching for a response. The reply comes in the form of a bluesy country guitar hook which cuts in unexpectedly; a sound that has no place being there, and which worms its way into your ear. ‘Out There’ starts as a murky post-punk rumba with cheesy dance piano breaks, before shrieking guitars loop in unison around Brown’s voice. Then, the steady persistent single kick drum on ‘Open’ hacks a course through Amos’ otherworldly feedback and violent guitar flashes, navigating a bleak inner maze, grasping hopefully towards a friendly flicker of light in the distance.
The title track embodies the rawness and contradictory forces at play on Everyone’s Crushed. Like broken clockwork, its constituent parts and instruments jostle out of sync and at odds with each other. Brown ultimately fails to resolve the awkwardness or corral the song into something coherent as their voice disintegrates into cracked facsimiles of itself: “I’m in love with everyone and everything hurts”. The song’s demonic time signature and structure may be unsettling, but makes sense in the context of an album that is not afraid to expose its listeners to what it feels like to be overwhelmed by life itself. It’s a testament to the duo’s growth and resilience, having weathered personal storms during its creation. Marking 2021 as one of the most challenging years of their lives, Brown grappled with mental health and a sense of disillusionment as capitalism and establishment politics resurged during the pandemic’s waning months, while Amos confronted personal battles with substance abuse, supported by Brown’s unwavering presence. The ache of these healing wounds leaks into the songwriting, adding sincerity and perspective to the senselessness, with palpable moments of tension and sadness followed by unexpected levity. Alternating layers of acceptance and frustration are hammered into the album’s fabric, reflecting back as a kind of stoic humour with which we can all associate.
True Life’ is a lesson in working with whatever life throws at you. The original chorus paraphrased Neil Young‘s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ but after a legal challenge, Water From Your Eyes’ post-modern sensibilities were triggered and it became a song about writing a song called ‘True Life‘. As a lazy bass chugs along, serial killer guitars stab in rhythmic lunges as Brown sings, tongue-in-cheek, “Neil let me sing your song…” Amos also takes over the pen on ‘Remember Not My Name’ and ’14’, two songs that he associates with particularly tough periods, but also times where the support of friends and the love you feel for yourself and others you’re close to are a lifeline. The beautiful horror of ’14’ , in contrast to the rest of the album, is a heady, almost baroque cinematic experience, which is sensitively interpreted by Brown’s direction in the accompanying video. Their artistic vision, inspired by Meshes of the Afternoon, Last Year in Marienbad and Spirited Away as well as the painting “The Triumph of Bacchus” by Diego Velázquez beautifully captures the act of letting go, a visual representation of the conflicts we carry within ourselves.
Despite the urgency of its fun freaky bass line, there’s a superficial buoyancy to closing track ‘Buy My Product’, masking a numbness to the commercial realities of life in the music industry. Brown bowls it straight down the line: There are no happy endings, only things that happen. Buy My Product”. In a last ironic gesture, the song dutifully delivers some of the albums most delicious guitar hooks and beats, a transaction between artist and audience: “I’m spending! I’m spending!”
Six albums in, the real potential of Water From Your Eyes is only just starting to crystallise. Everyone’s Crushed is their best collection of ideas to date, blending disparate elements into a harmonious cacophony you can lose yourself to. The exciting thing is that we doubt they’ve even reached the peak of their inspiring, oddball sounds.
‘Everyone’s Crushed’ is out 26th May, on Matador.
ourculture
Artist Spotlight: Water From Your Eyes
MAY 26, 2023
Water From Your Eyes is the Brooklyn-based duo of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, who have been making music together since they met in Chicago in 2016. They both have their own individual projects – Amos makes music as This Is Lorelai, Brown as thanks for coming — but their disparate and singularly offbeat sensibilities collide in fascinating ways in their collaborative work, which also tends to reflect the evolution of their personal relationship. They were dating when they made their self-titled debut EP in a week, broke up following a move to New York City, then started working on 2021’s Structure, their fifth record, which brought their knack for hooks, mangled experiments, abstract lyricism, and playful sincerity together and closer to the fore. It’s a balance they continue to toy with and perfect on Everyone’s Crushed, their first LP since signing to Matador, which is out today. “I’m ready to throw you up,” Brown sings on ’14’, which you might hear as off, because that’s exactly what the album keeps doing – the songs twist and tease and tie themselves into a knot until you almost can’t stomach it, but it’s the same chaos that feeds you, so you can’t help but come back. Throw you off as they might, there’s real tenderness and beauty there, and it’s all as thrilling as it is violently, inescapably funny.
We caught up with Water From Your Eyes for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about their collaborative relationship, the making of Everyone’s Crushed, the role of humour in their music, and more.
Rachel, you said in an interview a couple of years back that your last album, Structure, was the two of you being personal together. By comparison, you’ve described Everyone’s Crushed as your most collaborative record to date. What’s the difference between those things in your mind?
Rachel Brown: I feel like Structure was the first time we wrote an album together without any gimmicks. We used to write lyrics together based on, like, the viewpoints of animals or side characters in movies. Structure was the first time where we were writing music that wasn’t from anybody else’s viewpoint and had emotional ties to our own lives. I think in Somebody Else’s Song, the album before that, it was a little bit like that, but that was the least collaborative album, I would say, because it was made at the end – not at the end of our relationship, but while we were dating and living together and being in the band, and it was like pulling teeth, to make that album. Structure was the first time that we’d moved out of the apartment we were living in, so I had to go to Nate’s house when we were working on it, and that was nice. But even on Structure, there’s a couple of songs that Nate wrote entirely by himself, and also, four of the songs are just the same lyrics. This was just more songs that we worked on. It’s not that this was not personal, but it was also more collaborative. The process is like, Nate mixes the music and then we write music together. And this was the first album in like two albums that Nate didn’t write any of the lyrics entirely by himself, right?
Nate Amos: Yeah. The lyrics on the opener, ‘Structure’, is entirely Rachel. But apart from that, every song on this album, the lyrics are a collaboration. Rachel takes the lead lyrically, usually – in the past sometimes, but especially on this album, the process is, once the track is made, I’ll have some sort of kernel of an idea, a particular lyric, like one phrase. And then I pass it off to Rachel, and Rachel takes it and runs with it, and I function more as an editor or reflective surface from that point moving forward. So I think the lyrics on this album are largely Rachel, but I kind of build a little playground for Rachel to run around it. [laughs] My contributions are more like prompts than the bulk of it.
(Read more in original post)
Paste
Everyone’s Crushed Finds Water From Your Eyes at the Height of Their Powers
The experimental rock duo showcase their evolving chemistry across their best album yet
(Rating 8.3)
By Grant Sharples | May 26, 2023
Everyone’s Crushed, the latest album from experimental indie-pop duo Water From Your Eyes, picks up right where their last album left off. Its cheeky opening track, “Structure,” shares the same name as the Brooklyn natives’ 2021 breakthrough record. It’s as if vocalist Rachel Brown and multi-instrumentalist/producer Nate Amos are world-building, expanding on the lore of their dense catalog. On their first album for the revered indie titan, Matador Records, Water From Your Eyes deliver on the simmering anticipation surrounding them. It’s another case that marks Brown and Amos as one of the most innovative, exciting creative partnerships of the moment.
Although this is technically their sixth album as Water From Your Eyes, Brown and Amos have a long history together. Formerly a couple, they’ve worked on album after album after album, and their artistry has become a seemingly bottomless pit of fun, off-kilter ideas. Their prolific nature abounds in thanks for coming, Brown’s solo project that also includes plenty of Amos’ songwriting and production. With 79 Bandcamp releases under the thanks for coming moniker, these two musicians understand the symbiotic relationship at the heart of all creative endeavors. There’s also Amos’ solo music as This Is Lorelei and his project with indie-pop auteur Lily Konigsberg as My Idea. How they’ve managed to make so much music—and so much great music at that—is a herculean feat.
(Read more in original post)
AOTY
Water From Your Eyes Everyone’s Crushed
CRITIC SCORE
Based on 16 reviews
2023 Ratings: #39 / 353
USER SCORE
Based on 252 ratings
2023 Ratings: #164
Liked by 29 people
(See reviews from 16 different platforms in original post)
Water From Your Eyes Is Making Dazzling, Dadaist Art-Rock You Need to Hear
Singer-songwriter Rachel Brown talks with Them about the duo’s new album Everyone’s Crushed.
May 26, 2023
Singer-songwriter Rachel Brown speaks in a monotonous cadence resembling their vocal style in their art-rock duo Water From Your Eyes. When I bring this up, Brown explains, “I feel like it’s just sort of how I talk. I guess it’s meditative. It’s kind of drony in a way.”
But it’s clear that there’s plenty simmering beneath their cool demeanor. Brown, for example, admits to me that they used to do stand-up in high school, which feels shocking given their shyness but also fitting for someone so sharp and quick-witted. We’re sitting backstage together before their Los Angeles show at the tres hip venue Zebulon when they tell me that they don’t want to be perceived on stage. I joke that they should perform in a box,
“I try. It’s an invisible box,” they quip.
Later that night, watching Brown perform, it’s difficult to imagine them being afraid of the spotlight. Their groovy, minimalist dance moves mesmerize the crowd, and they effortlessly pull off some dry banter between songs. (Perhaps the stand-up skills have come in handy after all.) Their stage presence has an intentional, uneasy quality befitting of the duo’s angular and often challenging compositions.
Now 26, Brown seems to have found a new freedom in performing after seven years on the stage. It also helps that Water From Your Eyes is a collaborative project with bandmate and close friend Nate Amos, as opposed to their solo work under the moniker Thanks for Coming, which Brown describes as a kind of diary musical project that can be slightly compulsive. They feel some distance from WFYE’s music, since it’s not all coming from their personal experience. “I kind of hate performing my music,” they admit.
But however complex Brown’s relationship to the stage might be, they have found a refreshingly direct power in being a nonbinary performer. After a recent show, they tell me, they were thanked by someone whose partner is nonbinary. “It just means so much for them to know that there’s somebody out doing this and being in front of people,” they tell me. “I was like, damn, that’s really special.”
Moments of real human connection like those, juxtaposed with Brown and Amos’ unconventional and oft indescribable sounds, is what the band’s latest album Everyone’s Crushed is all about. The Brooklyn duo’s LP tackles themes like the duality of love and pain, existential horror and capitalism with Dadaist aplomb. Everyone’s Crushed finds the band at their most experimental and yet somehow their catchiest to date, drawing comparisons to art-school guitar hero Glenn Branca and the ever-befuddling abstractions of The Residents. It’s also a hallmark moment in the band’s career as the album is their first for the now legendary tastemaker label Matador Records, home of indie rock icons Pavement, Interpol, and Belle and Sebastian.
(Check out the original post for more info)
STEREOGUM
Album Of The Week: Water From Your Eyes Everyone’s Crushed
BY JAMES RETTIG
“There are no happy endings/ There are only things that happen.” If you’re looking for an encapsulation of Water From Your Eyes’ whole burnt-out ethos, look no further than “Buy My Product,” the insistent closing track from Everyone’s Crushed, the duo’s fifth overall album but first for Matador Records. After years in the trenches, Nate Amos and Rachel Brown’s winking, sardonic recording project has landed at an institutionalized label. And while one might believe that becoming part of such an esteemed roster represents the start of a new chapter, Water From Your Eyes know better than that. Any form of success is just another opportunity for failure. There are no happy endings. That’s why they’re begging: “Buy my product!” Like, engage, subscribe — maybe that catchy tune will help them pay the bills.
Though they might seem like new kids on the block to those less attuned to the underbelly of the Brooklyn DIY scene, Amos and Brown have been making music together since 2016, when they first met in Chicago. They started dating; they broke up after a move to New York City, but they continued making music. That messy origin story feels fitting for the sort of music that they make: dismantled pop songs, ones that find something transcendent in the rubble. They make music on their own — Amos as This Is Lorelai, Brown as Thanks For Coming — but what ties them to each other is a desire to confound.
Water From Your Eyes’ early discography is littered with half-formed ideas and experiments that don’t totally work, but something shifted with 2018’s Somebody Else’s Song. It felt like they had started to take their music — and by extension any sort of career that might come from it — a little more seriously, and among their intriguing deconstructions some real songs started to emerge, like the bittersweetly hypnotic “Adeline.” With Structure (one of the best albums of 2021), they continued to plant a flag in both directions, becoming both more hooky and more abstract.
“Structure is the first album we’ve ever been entirely happy with,” Amos said at the time. “We think it successfully captures the odd juxtaposition of seriousness and lightheartedness that’s always been at the core of Water From Your Eyes.” That dichotomy was on forceful display with tracks like “My Love’s,” which alternates between abrasive and sickly sweet, and the dueling “Quotations,” presented in two flavors on Structure: one mechanically raw, the other humanistically yearning.
(Check out the original post for more)
ALBUM REVIEW: WATER FROM YOUR EYES – EVERYONE’S CRUSHED
TIM SENTZ· MAY 26, 2023
[Matador; 2023]
At one point during “True Life”, the centerpiece of Water From Your Eyes’ Matador debut Everyone’s Crushed, Rachel Brown’s repetitive “she was wearing / she was wearing / she was wearing gold” transforms into “shoes wearing shoes wearing shoes.” For a moment it seems Water From Your Eyes are trying to make a statement on consumerism. We’re all just shoes wearing shoes, name brands wearing name brands. Or it could not be.
Digging for meaning in the music from the experimental duo of Brown and Nate Amos can be akin to searching for a needle in a haystack or a contact lens in a bucket of kitty litter; they probably had some intentions – either vague or concrete – when they set out on making these songs, but by the final product they’ve long been warped, waiting for the listener to decode them with their own personal understanding or imagination.
For six albums now the twosome have been tugging along their listeners, perhaps even trolling them in some degree, and Everyone’s Crushed may be their strongest box of tricks to date. To kick things off, the opener here is called “Structure”, which just so happened to be the name of their 2021 album. It’s something that’ll confuse search engines and conversations alike. Smart or trolling, no one cares when the music is this good.
The two are very much aware of the absurdity they surround themselves with. Their music is crooked, just like their sense of humor. “One, two, three, four, I count mountains,” Brown repeats on “Barley”, with a deadpan wisdom of someone in on a cosmic joke that’s never explained. Others employ a similar approach, but less teasingly; Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw comes to mind, but a sly smile never cracks Brown’s face, they remain in character, if we can even call it that – this is their character. “They’re nihilists Donnie, they don’t believe in anything” is the kind of thought that might come to many uninitiated Water From Your Eyes listeners, and it might even be a clever snapback, if Brown cared enough to listen.
This doesn’t in any way make Water From Your Eyes less interesting. Jumping to Matador for Everyone’s Crushed was a bold move; they now get mentioned in the same breath as Interpol and Spoon, two bands they’ve opened for. Now their music and hopefully influence can reach further, because today’s musical landscape seems devoid of this kind of truly offbeat humor.
Everyone’s Crushed is about nothing, but also about everything – but none of it would matter if the instrumental portion wasn’t as intriguing as the words. This album’s grooves run deeper than Structure’s, with strychnine-laced synths that develop in more dastardly manners – check out the deranged organs on “Open”. Then there’s the jangle-pop of “Out There”, where they pair the spacey synth and bass groove with delightful pianos before twirling out in scratchy guitar. Brown’s vocals over the melody are still intentionally misleading, “she plays the piano / she stole it from the mall / all of my best friends lost out here on the sprawl,” they sing, only to then toss out any hint of emotion by hypnotically rattling off a string of seemingly unrelated words – “Track Free Mend Three Bend Feed Knee” – and so on.
The beautiful “14” might be the realest (and clearest) Water From Your Eyes can get. Genuinely pondering their life choices seems strangely honest for this duo, but Brown allows their vocals to soar high, singing “I erased the space” – but naturally, they have to undercut the earnestness with a more characteristic line, “I’m ready to throw you up”, to balance the soapy discourse. “14” is still magical, it’s almost like their definition of a ballad as Amos stretches serene violin strings over a torture table to get the right sense of fear and comfort.
All of this is building to the greatest punchline to date from this band – the closing “Buy My Product” is a simple invitation to, well, spend some cash on their record. This isn’t Maynard James Keenan-level mockery, his hilariously aggravating “Hooker With a Penis” song from Tool’s Ænima savagely attacks his devoted fans. Brown and Amos aren’t interested in going that far – they don’t have their own winery to fall back on, and there’s no guarantee that their albums will sell as well. “Buy My Product” doesn’t cut deep on purpose, the two just want you and me and everyone we know to go buy their album, which is exactly what Taylor Swift and Morgan Wallen want you to do, they just glamorize it with mega-arena tours, major label supported ad campaigns and political banter. Well, Water From Your Eyes need to pay the rent, they need to eat, so do yourself and them a favor, and go buy their fucking album. “Now.”
84%
Water From Your Eyes are the chaotic DIY indie-pop duo who will help you laugh through the pain
Sadie Bell Published: May 26, 2023
This story originally appeared in the summer 2023 issue of Alternative Press. Read the cover story here.
Welcome to AP&R, where we highlight rising artists who will soon become your new favorite.
Water From Your Eyes once had a brilliant idea. Inspired by Blue Man Group, the indie-rock duo made up of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown spitballed a plan to cast a bunch of people who vaguely resembled them to play a series of concerts or even go on tour. Amos and Brown? They would stay home — probably to rewatch their favorite episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, they scrapped it.
“Turns out we know somebody who actually does that already,” Brown says, their earnest tone making it a little unclear if they’re being serious.
In fact, it’s a little unclear whether the band really considered their DIY lookalike scheme. The two of them call it the most ridiculous idea for a bit that they’ve ever come up with and never saw through, but they describe it rather matter-of-fact. It wouldn’t be too far off if they decided to revisit it, even for one night; really, no band are quite as in on the bit like Water From Your Eyes.
[Photo by Eleanor Petry]
TREBLEZINE
Best New Releases, May 26: Arlo Parks, Sparks, and more
BY JEFF TERICH
MAY 26, 2023
Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed
Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes aren’t a new band per se—they began releasing music back in 2016. But their first album for indie heavyweight Matador feels like a significant step forward, as their sound continues to evolve in a way that sees them weaving together strains of experimental electronics and industrial elements with pop songwriting. Moments like “Barley” and “Out There” are prime examples of this innovative fusion, finding more tuneful applications of their exhilarating weirdness as Rachel Brown’s vocals are the strongest they’ve ever sounded.
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Step inside the weird and wonderful world of Water From Your Eyes
Each week in Next Noise, we go deep on the rising talent ready to become your new favourite artist. The band’s captivating new album, ‘Everyone’s Crushed’, sees the duo create their own intimate and surreal musical language
13th March 2023
Basking in the winter sunshine and admiring the multicoloured houseboats that line the narrow curves of Regent’s Canal, Water From Your Eyes are discussing their long and winding journey to get here. The sky is peculiarly bright for a February afternoon, and for experimental pop duo Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, the world feels delicious. “Things are finally happening for our band – and look where we are today,” says producer Amos, gesturing at his quaint surroundings as light catches his rings.
In a few hours, the pair will headline The Lexington – one of London’s most prominent indie venues – but for now, we’re in a dreamy, singular moment. Brown and Amos have spent the past six years working towards selling out rooms overseas, having started out as a completely DIY operation out of their home studio set-ups. Their electro sound is as healing as it is brutal: largely inspired by early New Order, the songs are wreathed in weighty fuzz, crackle and gorgeously expansive tones, while remaining distinctly self-contained.
Brown and Amos commandeer their own universe, melding affecting pop with an offbeat sense of humour. Yet that disruptive spirit doesn’t rely on punchlines so much as erratic pacing and subtle, surrealist jokes. 2021 EP ‘Somebody Else’s Songs’ recalled the lo-fi meme culture of early social media, opening with a dead-eyed cover of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’. Breakthrough album ‘Structure’, released later that year, went a step further, utilising Brown’s forthright delivery to stunning effect. “My love is lost somewhere under the ground / They know their own way out,” they sang over whirring drones on ‘My Love’s’. Nation Of Language‘s lightly abrasive synth-pop is an easy comparison point, but Water From Your Eyes’ fascinating, strange sincerity is all theirs.
(More in original post)
FADER
New Music Friday: Stream new project from Lil Durk, Arlo Parks, Kari Faux, and more
Plus new albums from Clark, Mr. Eazi, Kevin Morby, and more.
By THE FADER
Water From Your Eyes, Everyone’s Crushed
Rachel Brown and Nate Amos make adventurous music that ranges from clinical experimentation to oozing emotion (as in the case of May Song You Need entry “14”). But whatever mode
they’re in on Everyone’s Crushed — whether they’re coming from a cool remove or right in the thick of it — they always manage to keep things objectively interesting and emotionally evocative.
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music
Consequence
Water from Your Eyes Break Down New Album Everyone’s Crushed Track by Track: Exclusive
Our May CoSign take us through their new LP
Water from Your Eyes, photo by Ben Kaye
May 26, 2023
May 26, 2023 | 9:30am ET
Track by Track is our recurring feature series in which artists guide readers through each song on their latest release. Today, our May 2023 CoSign Water from Your Eyes give us insight into their Matado Records debut, Everyone’s Crushed.
New York City-based indie duo Water from Your Eyes (Consequence‘s May CoSign!) have released their latest album, the excellent Everyone’s Crushed. A record defined by perfectly constructed contradictions, Everyone’s Crushed finds Nate Amos and Rachel Brown at their best.
The album’s nine songs are the product of Amos and Brown working closer together than ever before, and the result is noticeable. From its clear pop sensibilities to its creative, wild experimentation, each song brims with exciting ideas, subtle humor, and sheer personality.
“Some of the older albums, a handful of songs were done, lyrics and all, by the time we got together to work on it,” Amos told Consequence in our CoSign profile. “Whereas this time, I would finish the instrumentals and maybe have like a single lyric or just an idea of what the lyrics could be, and then Rachel would kind of take the reins from there.”
Over Amos’ unflinching compositions, Brown delivers abstract musings that are sometimes deadpan and at other times, starkly beautiful. They present a unique perspective, one that forgoes both pessimism and optimism outright.
HAPPY MAG
Immerse yourself in Water From Your Eyes, the enigmatic duo from Brooklyn fusing arthouse aesthetics with a post-punk edge, captivating listeners with their unconventional indie pop brilliance.
Water From Your Eyes, the enigmatic duo from the heart of Brooklyn, effortlessly blend arthouse aesthetics with a post-punk edge, leaving listeners captivated by their unconventional indie pop brilliance. Enter Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, the visionaries behind the highly anticipated album “Everyone’s Crushed” and the creators of visually stunning music videos that redefine artistic boundaries.
In an interview with Happy, Nate and Rachel offer a glimpse into their intriguing lives. Nate, a connoisseur of horror films and music, finds solace in the eerie melodies while meticulously backing up his ailing computer. Meanwhile, Rachel’s return from a sublet in the vibrant streets of Chicago added a dash of cosmopolitan allure to their nomadic existence, firmly grounding them in the thriving music scene of Brooklyn alongside illustrious acts like Sweet Baby Jesus and The Cradle.
Delving into their creative process, Water From Your Eyes showcase their evolution as a powerhouse duo. Rachel’s poignant lyricism takes center stage, accompanied by Nate’s musical wizardry. Collaboration has been the lifeblood of their artistry, allowing them to surmount obstacles like their breakup while sharing a living space. Their music, a soul-stirring exploration of anxiety and uncertainty, serves as both an escape and a catalyst for profound introspection.
With an unrivaled sound and visuals that mesmerise, Water From Your Eyes continues to be a profound source of inspiration, bringing wit and whimsy to the tumultuous tapestry of modern life. As they traverse their musical odyssey, they aspire not only to forge an indelible impact on the world but also to treasure the small joys that infuse their journey with boundless love and passion.
Happy: What are you up to today?
Nate: I’m in a days-long process of backing up my old computer which is dying.
Mostly watching horror movies and listening to music while I keep an eye on that.
I’m mostly just hanging out and decompressing in between tours while I’m home in Brooklyn, trying to build up as much energy as I can.
I’ve been eating a lot of Chinese food from a restaurant I used to live next to – I would hang out on their roof and one time they saw me and got upset but I think it’s been long enough that they don’t recognize me anymore.
Rachel: I flew back to New York today from Chicago, where I’ve been for the last week doing nothing but sitting at my parents’ house playing this new game on my phone called “Township” where I run a town (farm, manufacture, etc.)
I’m back in New York right now, but I am staying at my friend Ana’s apartment because I’m subletting my apartment until July.
She’s at the gym so I’m in her living room with her family’s cat she just brought back from New Jersey. His name is Larry and he is so cute, but I am allergic so I am sitting here sneezing and typing.
Happy: Where’s home, and what’s the music scene like in your neck of the woods?
Nate: Home is Brooklyn (when I’m here). The music scene is awesome and really wide-ranging but I can’t really say I know that much about what’s going on these days as we’re usually on the road.
There are a lot of really inspiring artists that I’m aware of, and I’m sure there are even more that I don’t know.
Rachel: I live in Brooklyn, but lately it doesn’t really feel like I have a home.
There’s a place where all of my stuff is but I do not seem to be currently living there seeing as though I’m on my friend’s couch right now.
I have no idea what’s going on in the music scene here, I haven’t been in Brooklyn for more than a month and a half continuously since before March 2022.
I know there are lots of very talented artists here (i.e. Sweet Baby Jesus, Fantasy of a Broken Heart, Kolb, The Cradle, Joey Agresta, Hank, Godcaster, etc.) but I have no idea what’s going on.
I hope everyone’s doing well. Very sweet and talented folks here.
Happy: Tell us about your average day.
Nate: Generally waking up in an unfamiliar place and heading to the next show, wherever that is.
I’ve been reading a lot recently. When I’m at home I watch a lot of movies/tv shows and try to write music as much as I can.
Rachel: Usually I have a stomach ache. That’s the one real consistent thing about my life right now.
I’d say an average day on tour is waking up and driving many hours. Looking out of the window at the view from the highway.
Sometimes it’s so beautiful and sometimes it looks like every place you’ve ever been but I think there’s something beautiful about that as well.
