by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Rachel Brown is quietly having one of the best year's in new music. Their band Thanks For Coming has nine different releases (...in 2017 alone) including the utterly essential Sspplliitt, an EP that pairs the project's Chicago and New York line-ups, but thats only scratching the surface. In April, Brown and creative partner Nate Amos released Water From Your Eyes' full length debut Long Days, No Dreams via Sooper Records, a stunning blend of vibrant dance-pop and heartbreaking beauty. There's a futuristic hi-fi quality to the duo's work, Amos' pop music is made with splendid technicolor in stark contrast with Brown's slow and emotive vocals, culminating in something bold yet sensitive, fragile but assured. It's only been a month since the release, but the duo are back with III, a stunning EP collecting two expansive new songs and a reimagined version of a Long Days, No Dreams highlight. Each song offers a different side to the Water From Your Eyes puzzle, highlighting the duo's creative spark and borderless exploration.
It's not often you get impatient musicians releasing patient music, but "I'll Be," the opening track on their new EP is as patient as they come. The song opens with a slow drifting atmosphere of guitars and keys, a light fog that fills the room with a warm glow and Brown's hauntingly beautiful voice. Nearly eight and a half minutes long, "I'll Be" veers closer to post-rock than anything that could be considered dance music, but as the percussion and production creep in with a manic pulse, the song swells into a deep groove, bursting with new energy while carefully staying it's course. The beat subsides but the music's forward motion is locked in, floating back into an atmospheric dreamscape.
Working off the slow building tension of "I'll Be" as a lead in, "Make Her No One (Take 2)" bounces to life with a nimble and hypnotic rhythm, replacing the original's acoustic beauty with a wild jungle beat that thrives on repetition. The song's minimal bass and sampled live drums create a warped atmosphere for Brown's casual vocal melodies, a twisted pairing that further illuminates the band's ability to merge disparate sounds into something captivating and inherently natural.
"Can't Hold Me, Gravity" takes the band's occasional post-punk qualities and lets them run wild. The song skronks with disorienting beeps and big distorted bass, painting a dangerous and sordid dystopia. Brown's voice is a stunning as ever, radiating against the backdrop with a fuzzy pop bliss, singing gently without a care as the ringing swirls, drops out, and swirls again around them. Water From Your Eyes are an undefinable project built on the mutual understanding of two great musicians, deeply in-tune, but willfully detached.