I can understand this bear’s journey. You know, the journey the bear takes in the video? Yeah, there are times that I can relate.
Out today, “Playing Classics” is the second single from Water From Your Eyes’ forthcoming album, It’s a Beautiful Place, landing August 22nd via Matador Records. The track finds duo Nate Amos and Rachel Brown delivering an expansive and coolly composed banger – a 6-minute dance-floor-friendly epic that threads elegantly heat-warped piano lines across pulsing four-on-the-floor rhythms. Watch the James Dayton directed video HERE.
“Playing Classics started as an attempt to transform an existing guitar piece that I had stalled on into a dance number after Rachel requested that the next album have a disco song on it – the original version was 12 minutes long,” writes Amos. Brown adds, “it was probably my favorite instrumental that Nate sent so it was my favorite to work on lyrically. I love disco and dance music and I had been begging him to make a super dance targeted track. I was focusing on the idea of dancing in a club despite the world falling apart outside. It was written during Brat Summer, so Charli definitely had an influence.”
It’s A Beautiful Place is a gleaming megalopolis: a satellite view of eras and musical forms, a reframing of the y2k songbook that is at once awe-struck and mindful of its place in the vastness. “It ended up being about time, dinosaurs and space,” says Amos. “We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip.” Pre-order the album HERE.
The NYC-based duo were recently featured in a Paste cover story and profiled by the Guardian and Rolling Stone, who called the album “jaw-droppingly brilliant.” Brown was also a guest on Talkhouse’s new Music Person podcast. Listen HERE.
The band will support It’s A Beautiful Place with extensive North American and European headline tours. The former launches September 22 in Philadelphia and runs through November 2 in Denver, including stops at Bowery Ballroom in New York, Lodge Room in Los Angeles, and Sleeping Village in Chicago. The latter kicks off on November 13 at Village Underground in London and ends December 7 at Lisbon’s Musicbox. Purchase tickets HERE.
In the time since 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed, their Matador debut and critical breakout – which appeared in end of year lists by The New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork, NME, Vogue, Wired and Rolling Stone – Rachel Brown and Nate Amos have become a pillar of the city’s alternative music scene and one of its most revered underground exports. Live, they’ve expanded to a quartet, joining forces with guitarist Al Nardo and drummer Bailey Wollowitz of NYC duo Fantasy of a Broken Heart. They played huge stages supporting Interpol on tour, including in front of 160,000 fans in Mexico City. Back home, the band established a DIY boat show franchise on the East River, hosting friends at the heart of the city’s musical vanguard including YHWH Nailgun, Model/Actriz, Frost Children, and Kassie Krut. Brown released a new EP under their thanks for coming moniker, while Amos released an acclaimed full length under his This Is Lorelei solo project.
The duo finished the bulk of It’s a Beautiful Place last summer, just as they have every other WFYE release: in Amos’s bedroom, under the watchful eye of a tattered Robin Williams poster from the Mork & Mindy era.. “Basically,” jokes Amos, “Robin is like a silent member of Water From Your Eyes.” But this time, much of the writing and recording were shaped around the dynamics of a full-blooded live group: “When you’re playing with a band you tend to write with one in mind – this was the first time I wrote anything for WFYE imagining us playing anywhere bigger than a basement,” he observes.
True to this, ‘Nights In Armor’ is introduced with a whirlwind of Frusciante Stratocaster bliss. ‘Born 2’ is a worldbuilding guitar onslaught, its lyrics channeling a preoccupation with sci-fi literature and political theory as Brown’s voice glides overhead: “the world is so common / and born to become / something else”. “I’ve been carrying around The Dispossessed (a 1974 anarchist utopian novel by Ursula K. Le Guin) and There Is No Unhappy Revolution (a 2017 non-fiction by Marcello Tarì) in my backpack for well over a year now,” Brown says. “They have been to four different continents and across almost every state line. While writing lyrics for the album, I skimmed both books quite thoroughly.”
Throughout It’s A Beautiful Place is a clear sense of a band who have honed their curveballs into home runs. Looming and melancholy, wide-eyed and petrified, it’s Blade Runner with a touch of WALL-E, it’s Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob. These are songs that look outward, conscious of our smallness and questioning our place in the universe while admiring the surrounding beauty.
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TRACKLIST
- One Small Step
- Life Signs
- Nights in Armor
- Born 2
- You Don’t Believe in God?
- Spaceship
- Playing Classics
- It’s a Beautiful Place
- Blood on the Dollar
- For Mankind
LIVE DATES
NORTH AMERICAN HEADLINE TOUR
Sept 22 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^
Sept 23 – Washington, DC @ The Atlantis ^
Sept 24 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Back Room ^
Sept 26 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl ^
Sept 27 – Nashville, TN @ Blue Room ^
Sept 28 – St Louis, MO @ Old Rock House ^
Sept 30 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St Entry ^
Oct 1 – Madison WI, @ High Noon Saloon ^
Oct 2 – Chicago IL, @ Sleeping Village ^
Oct 3 – Detroit MI, @ El Club ^
Oct 4 – Toronto, ON @ Project Nowhere ^
Oct 6 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz ^
Oct 7 – Amherst, MA @ The Drake ^
Oct 8 – Boston, MA @ The Sinclair ^
Oct 10 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom ^
Oct 21 – Austin TX @ Parish #
Oct 22 – Dallas, TX @ Dada #
Oct 24 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sister Bar %
Oct 25 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge %
Oct 26 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah %
Oct 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room %
Oct 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent %
Oct 31 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios %
Nov 1 – Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s %
Nov 2 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret %
Nov 4 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux %
Nov 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court %
Nov 7 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall %
^ w/ Her New Knife
# w/ Winter
% w/ Dutch Interior
EU HEADLINE TOUR
Nov 13th – London, UK @ Village Underground
Nov 14th – Manchester, UK @ YES
Nov 15th – Glasgow, UK @ The Rum Shack
Nov 16th – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club
Nov 18th – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
Nov 20th – Brussels, BE @ Botanique Rotonde
Nov 21st – Cologne, DE @ 674FM
Nov 23rd – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso (Small Hall)
Nov 24th – Hamburg, DE @ Aalhaus
Nov 25th – Copenhagen, DK @ Ideal Bar
Nov 26th – Berlin, DE @ Lark
Nov 28th – Munich, DE @ Import/Export
Nov 29th – Milan, IT @ Arci Bellezza
Nov 30th – Dudingen, CH @ Bad Bonn
Dec 2nd – Paris, FR @ Boule Noire
Dec 3rd – Lyon, FR @ Le Sonic
Dec 5th – Barcelona, ES @ Sala Upload
Dec 6th – Madrid, ES @ Sala Sol
Dec 7th – Lisbon, PT @ Musicbox
