Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 31:25 minutes | 604 MB | Genre: Indie Pop, Art Pop, Female Vocal
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Matador
Life is horribly dark right now. And yet, it is not unfunny. That’s the sentiment that animates Water From Your Eyes on their new album, and first for Matador, ‘Everyone’s Crushed,’ out May 26. On the follow-up to the Brooklyn duo’s 2021 breakthrough, ‘Structure,’Rachel Brown (they/them) and Nate Amos (he/him) find silliness and fatalism dancing in a frantic lockstep, using heart palpitating rhythms and absurdist, deadpan lyrics to convey stories of personal and societal unease. Described by Brown as Water From Your Eyes’ most collaborative record ever, it’s a swollen contusion of an album: experimental pop music that’s pretty and violent, raw and indelible.Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, now on their sixth full length album as Water From Your Eyes, make experimental pop music with occasional forays into dance tracks that, as their official bio puts it, incorporates “serene industrial polyrhythms, ambient drone music, and contemporary composition.” Opening with the short blast of voices and beeping keyboards of “Structure,” the duo then move into the spoken word backed “Barley,” which has a ding-dong rhythm and a recurring keyboard whine that accompanies a triplet that accidentally (or not) quotes Sting, “Shit/ Untold/ Walk in fields of gold.”
The mood in these first tracks is tense and unsettling, particularly in the rolling, danceable rhythms of the intricate “Out There,” where acoustic piano accents and an ascending keyboard flourish play as Brown sings “she’s drowning in people” before jabberwocky chorus lines materialize in a monotone voice against an emergency siren: “Track give dive slack drag draft mud scram/ Hand knee feed bend three meant free track/ Track.” Brown’s deadpan delivery continues, accompanied by plucked strings and sharp guitar edges, on the title track: “I’m with everyone I love and everything hurts/ I’m in love with everyone and everything hurts/ I’m with everyone I hurt and everything’s love.”
Near the end, however, the fever breaks, emotions turn warmer, and the album’s mood relaxes. “14” is nearly a hymn with string sounds undulating as Brown sings with an open plaintive tone. Confidence, or perhaps surrender, returns in the finale, “Buy My Product.” Everyone’s Crushed is an impassioned journey to be sure, one written using serialism and microtonality, and at times evoking avant composers Haruomi Hosono and Glenn Branca. It could benefit from more hooks and less drama but is admirably dense and churning, ultimately refusing to settle. – Robert Baird
Tracklist:
1-01. Water From Your Eyes – Structure (01:49)
1-02. Water From Your Eyes – Barley (03:29)
1-03. Water From Your Eyes – Out There (03:20)
1-04. Water From Your Eyes – Open (02:53)
1-05. Water From Your Eyes – Everyone’s Crushed (04:01)
1-06. Water From Your Eyes – True Life (03:45)
1-07. Water From Your Eyes – Remember Not My Name (03:18)
1-08. Water From Your Eyes – 14 (05:53)
1-09. Water From Your Eyes – Buy My Product (02:54)
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