New York’s Water From Your Eyes aim for a new stratosphere with their upcoming album, It’s A Beautiful Place, slated for an August 22nd release on Matador Records. Following the critical embrace of 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed, the duo—Nate Amos and Rachel Brown—appear poised to deliver a project that surveys vast musical terrains and epochs, reimagining a Y2K-adjacent musical consciousness with both wonder and an acute sense of scale. Amos suggests the thematic core orbits “time, dinosaurs and space,” a conceptual framework for exploring disparate styles as fleeting moments in an immense continuum.
The first taster, “Life Signs,” just dropped, and it’s a compellingly disorienting introduction. The track initially grounds itself in an unexpected nu-metal throb, overlaid with Brown’s coolly delivered, rhythmic vocals, before it splinters into the kind of soaring, dream-like chorus that has become a WFYE hallmark. Brown also directed the accompanying visuals, which cleverly cycle through myriad television genres, portraying the duo across a simulated lifetime. For Brown, television’s capacity to compress “infinite universes into a little box” resonates with the song’s ambition to encapsulate “an entire lifetime within a short few minutes.”
The recurring refrain, “i’m unfulfilled, i’m in a beautiful place / yeah it’s so sad in this beautiful place / i need you here right now in this beautiful place,” is at the song’s emotional core, suggesting a profound sense of alienation and longing, with “beautiful place” becoming a container for this paradox.
While the new record, like its predecessors, largely came together in Amos’s bedroom studio (reportedly under the benign gaze of a Mork & Mindy-era Robin Williams poster), the band’s recent experiences touring as an expanded four-piece have clearly informed its creation. The zero-gravity drift of opener ‘One Small Step’ gives way to tracks that hint at this larger dynamic, from the reported John Frusciante-inflected guitars on ‘Nights In Armor’ to the ambitious, sci-fi and political theory-tinged sprawl of ‘Born 2’. The band cites a diverse palette, invoking “Blade Runner with a touch of WALL-E…Kubrick and Asimov with a hint of Jay and Silent Bob,” to describe the album’s looming, wide-eyed scope.
Water From Your Eyes will be taking It’s A Beautiful Place on the road with extensive North American and European headline tours this autumn.
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 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