Water From Your Eyes

Water From Your Eyes share new single 'Playing Classics' from their new album 'It's A Beautiful Place' out August 22 on Matador.

Out today, ‘Playing Classics’ is the second single from Water From Your Eyes’ forthcoming album It’s A Beautiful Place, out August 22nd on Matador Records. The track finds duo Nate Amos and Rachel Brown delivering an expansive, cooly composed banger, a 6-minute dance-floor-friendly epic that threads elegantly heat-warped piano lines across pulsing four-on-the-floor rhythms. The track comes comes with a music video directed by James Dayton.

“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. We wanted to present a wide range of styles in a way that acknowledges everything’s just a tiny blip.”

says Amos.

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 recorded 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, 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.

The NYC-based duo were recently profiled by the Guardian and Rolling Stone, who called the album “jaw-droppingly brilliant.”

The band will support It's A Beautiful Place with extensive North American and European headline tours.

The latter kicks off on November 13 at Village Underground in London and ends December 7 at Lisbon’s Musicbox. Purchase tickets HERE.

Photo by: Adam Powell

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