Water From Your Eyes: It’s A Beautiful Place [Album Review]

Water From Your Eyes
It’s A Beautiful Place
Matador Records [2025]

“Every track a surprise — clever, muscular, and impossible to skip.”

Album Overview: Water From Your Eyes is the New York project of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, a duo who built their reputation in the city’s underground before breaking through with Everyone’s Crushed in 2023. Brown brings sharp, curious lyrics, while Amos handles the adventurous production — a pairing that’s earned them critical love and a loyal following. Over the past year, they’ve grown from a bedroom-born duo into a full live band, touring internationally and holding down their spot in NYC’s DIY circuit. Both Brown and Amos also juggle their own solo projects, proving their creative drive never stops.

Their new record, It’s a Beautiful Place, feels like a leap forward — written largely in Amos’s bedroom but shaped by the momentum of a group now playing to larger rooms. The album plays with perspective, zooming from the personal to the cosmic, often with a wink of humor. Short instrumental breaks act as portals between bigger moments, giving the record a cinematic scope while still carrying their playful, left-field spirit. Guitar fuzz, Brown’s soft vocals, and swirling synths keep things fluid and immersive, with new details surfacing every spin.

Musical Style: The door here is wide open: fuzzed-out guitar blasts, disco-leaning beats, folk-rock detours, and piano loops that feel both hypnotic and experimental. Rhythms shift on a dime — rigid and mechanical one moment, loose and rolling the next. Brown’s delivery flips between conversational and soaring, always anchoring the sonic chaos with warmth.

Evolution of Sound: Everyone’s Crushed put Water From Your Eyes on the map, but It’s a Beautiful Place shows them stretching out confidently. These songs are bigger, written with live shows in mind, ready to blow open in both club and festival settings. The tension between Brown’s direct vocals and Amos’s layered arrangements now feels like a dialogue — intimate yet expansive, playful yet massive.

Artists with Similar Fire: Think the dance-punk experiments of Model/Actriz, the jagged guitars of Sonic Youth, and Stereolab’s brainy but fun streak. Brown’s dry vocal cadences sometimes echo Dry Cleaning, while the larger-than-life guitar runs nod toward John Frusciante. If you’re into Deerhoof’s wild detours or Wet Leg’s indie cheekiness, this record should hit home.

Pivotal Tracks: “Life Signs” kicks things off with a pounding beat that suddenly flips into a glowing, anthemic chorus — a mission statement for the whole record. “Nights in Armor” spirals through tangled guitar lines before landing on one of Brown’s rawest, most affecting performances. “Born 2” blends sci-fi imagery with heavy riffs, while “Playing Classics” drops into a trance-like groove with piano loops and dance-floor drive — easily one of their boldest songs yet. “Blood on the Dollar” strips away electronics for a folk-rock turn, capped with one of Amos’s most emotional solos. Every track brings a different surprise, and none of them feel skippable.

Lyrical Strength: Brown pulls from literature, political theory, and personal reflections, slipping in nods to Le Guin and Marcello Tarì without ever losing immediacy. Their lyrics constantly juggle the weight of cosmic time with the tiny dramas of everyday life — always with wit, curiosity, and just enough bite. Religious and spiritual questions float in and out, tangled with the present moment, making the writing feel universal and deeply personal all at once.

Final Groove: It’s a Beautiful Place is the kind of record that keeps unfolding the more time you give it — clever but never pretentious, sprawling but never bloated. Water From Your Eyes are thinking bigger now, building songs that can fill the room without losing the charm that made them stand out in the first place. It’s a confident step into their next chapter, and if this is the sound of them leveling up, the future looks wide open.

WATER FROM YOUR EYES REVIEW HISTORY
Everyone’s Crushed (2023)

WATER FROM YOUR EYES LINKS
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Bandcamp | Matador Records