#Water From Your Eyes

[jgthirlwell]

playlist 01.28.24

Monika Roscher Big Band Witchy Activities and the Maple Death (Zenna) REZZETT Meant Like This (Trilogy Tapes) Nihiloxica Source of Denial (Crammed) Forest Swords Bolted (Ninja Tune) Vonn Zandus Unimmortal (Bandcamp) Armand Hammer We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (Fat Possum) David Chesworth Ensemble Badlands (W.Mine) JAAW Supercluster (Svart) Laurel Halo Atlas (Awe) Sprain The Lamb As Effigy (The Flenser) Shining Grindstone (Rune Grammafon) Rev Kristen Hayter Saved (Perpetual Flame Industries) Water From Your Eyes Everyones Crushed (Matador) Hashashin Nihsahsah (Art as Catharsis) Colin Stetson When we were that what wept for the seas (52hz) Gazelle Twin Black Dog (Invada) JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown Scaring the hoes (AWAL) Wednesday Rat Saw God (Dead Oceans) Qow ElMosameh Sherine (irsh) The Guru Guru Pchew / Make Less Babies (Suburban) Future Old People Are Wizards M (Zeal) Marnie Stern The Comeback Kid (Joyful Noise) Cruel Diagonals Fractured Whole (Beacon Sound)

[mumblelard]

finnie came over after work last night and we sat at my kitchen table, drinking tequila with tooth cracking cold bottles of grape pop and talking about the abandoned house behind the old school, rabid beavers, strawberry soju, the loose lioness, interstate latex fires, locket cats, and last days. it was a nice night

[teathattast]

i hear your voice and save it for later

i get lost in the sounds when you're around

there is water in my eyes

and i am alive

[innovacancy]

Water from Your Eyes Paradise Rock Club, Boston, MA 14 February 2024

[imathers]

2023 Loosies: Water From Your Eyes — "Barley"

[ONE LAST TIME: there's some flashing stuff in the video, so watch out for that if it's an issue for you.]

And so we end my roundup of stuff I loved from 2023 with one of my favourite music videos and songs of the whole dang thing. I did like the Everyone's Crushed LP enough that it almost made my top 20 (and I seem to be getting more into it now, in a Torres Memorial Prize kind of way) and honestly one factor that caused me to cut it towards the end is just how often I thought I wanted to listen to it and it turned out what I really meant is I wanted to listen to "Barley" again. To me this is just a hypnotic, spellbinding song, one that hit me immediately and that I can practically listen to on a loop. I think Rachel Brown's vocal performance is incredible (and I don't know what "you're a cool thing, count mountains" means.... but also I do, you know?). This, to me, is as catchy as anything more obviously poppy or widely appealing I've put on this or any other list. And I love the video! These kids seem cooler than I ever managed to be, and that's a good feeling.

[punk-chicken-radio]

Smelly’s Song Of The Week…..

Water From Your Eyes - Barley

TOS 

[omegaremix]

Omega Radio for March 9, 2019; #189.

Surfbort “Les Be In Love”

All Dogs “Buddy”

Mega Bog “Marianne”

Big Ups “Fear”

Bangzz “Your Boyfriend Is Really Bringing You Down”

Wall “Fit The Part”

The Feel “You’re Around”

Being Dead “Apostles’ Prom”

Tunic “Boss”

Bee Bee Sea “This Dog Is The King Of Losers”

Grim Streaker “Freak Child”

Annabel Lee “Hi Hi Hi”

Thick “Lyfe”

Duchess Says “Rabies (Baby’s Got The…)”

Warbly Jets “Propaganda”

My Teenage Stride “Drenched In Blood And Flesh In Tatters”

Public Practice “Foundation”

Nazca Plate “Blotter”

Doe “Team Spirit”

Slow Mass “Suburban Yellow”

Thanks For Coming “underboxesbehinddoors...”

Cattle “Caring”

Nilufer Yanya “In Your Head”

Richard Vain “Digital”

Illiterate Light “Two Cats”

The Royal They “Sludgefucker”

Rye Pines “Icebox”

Surfbort “Pretty Little Fucker”

Sharkmuffin “I Called You From The Moon” (acoustic demo)

SWMRS “Broadcast This”

Current Affairs “Breeding Feeling”

Shady Bug “Make It Up”

VV Torso “Blood”

Water From Your Eyes “You Never Admit You Could Do Better”

Deluxe post-punk, d.i.y., and city sounds

[multimikedc]

Water From Your Eyes.

[soundgrammar]

Listen/purchase: Barley by Water From Your Eyes

[itsallhoney]

Everyone's Crushed | Water From Your Eyes

[dustedmagazine]

Water From Your Eyes — Everyone’s Crushed (Matador)

Photo by Eleanor Petry 

Everyone's Crushed by Water From Your Eyes

Everyone’s Crushed pulls apart the idea of rock songs, turns them inside out and chops them to pieces, then just when you’re getting accustomed to the deconstructive chaos, interrupts with an inexorable beat, a fragile melody, a danceable beat. You can’t get comfortable even being uncomfortable. There’s always something unexpected around the next sharp corner.

Everyone’s Crushed is the duo’s sixth full-length, taking Structure’s gleeful art experiments into even more fractured territories. And yet though Water From Your Eyes clearly expects you to be brave and open-minded, the two of them — Rachel Brown and Nate Amos — also want you to dance. A frantic, cerebral hedonism animates “Barley,” as it swells from minimalist chant to a breezy, bubbly OOIOO-style synthetic bop.  “One, two, three, four, I count mountains,” intones Brown, expressionless and austere, as a kickdrum racket blows up behind her, arguing for frenetic, cathartic movement.

These songs are always morphing, a kind of stop-motion being/becoming cycle unfolding as you tap your pencil to them.  The title starts with the bare blurt of funk bass, trebly accents of snare and high-hat punctuating at intervals, like ESG pared down to a line drawing, or Pere Ubu lying bleached out on the beach. Brown plays with a phrase, pushing it from cliché into ever-odder absurdity, “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts,” then “I’m in love with everyone, and everything hurts,” and finally, “I’m with everyone I hurt, and everything’s love.” You think you’ve got it, the syncopated beat, the evolving repetition, the giddy plinks of pizzicato strings, and then it all changes with a raw, rupturing onslaught of distorted guitar. It’s an art song, it’s an electro-beat, it’s guitar rock. It’s all that.

These songs are prickly, stood up against the blinding white light of negative space and shot through with sharp, stabbing dissonance, and yet it’s hard to overstate how much fun they are. “True Life” rocks on a pendulating, sirening, octave-jumping riff, an antic, frantic snarl of pop noise that necessitates movement. Then it clears for a serene melodic interval, just Brown’s voice singing and some soothing synths, and then the two elements mix (I won’t say blend, because they remain separate) in a fascinating amalgam. Later “14” tips the balance towards beauty, with lush strings and undulating waves of melody and hardly any beat at all, and still, even here, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next (the funky, jittery “Buy My Product,” like Gauche crossed with the Boredoms, comes next).

It's been a while since an album surprised me, not just the first time through, but continually, throughout the listening experience. Everyone’s Crushed keeps you guessing, all the way through, and that’s kind of a miracle. Bravo.

Jennifer Kelly

[fka-aj]

Best releases from Q2 (imo)

1. That! Feels Good! (Jessie Ware)

2. LOVE, ANGELS, PARANOÏA (Christine and the Queens)

3. Maps (billy woods & Kenny Segal)

4. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love (Kara Jackson)

5. Erotic Probiotic (Nourished by Time)

6. Arrived Anxious, Left Bored (Flume)

7. My Soft Machine (Arlo Parks)

8. Everyone’s Crushed (Water from your Eyes)

9. The Age of Pleasure (Janelle Monae)