Water From Your Eyes demand close attention on the absorbing Everyone’s Crushed
"Everyone's Crushed"
On signing to Matador and building substantial buzz for their fifth album, it would have been a natural step for Brooklyn duo Water From Your Eyes to polish Everyone’s Crushed for a wider audience.
Instead, they’ve doubled down on the experimental side of their art-pop. They require focus from the listener but dig in and you’ll find greatness.
On first spin, the record can sound a tad icy. Opening sound palette “Structure” is interesting but distant, and the second track (and first single) “Barley” starts similarly: its burst of keys and Rachel Brown’s blank, oblique vocals. A minute in, though, the tune thaws and blossoms. Cowbells and bendy guitars weave into the mix; Brown milks the contrast, chanting cheerleader style over their own frosty talk-singing.
Water From Your Eyes never give you too much of a good thing. Highlight “Out There” is built around a clutch of gripping musical moments that get a brief runout before going away again - a saloon piano, synth pans, gnarly slashed guitars. You’re kept on a short leash: listen intently, or you’re liable to miss the coolest bit of the song.
The best cuts, like the title track, are masterfully structured for dramatic effect. As the bassline churns around in circles, the lyric folds in on itself, singing in turn “I’m with everyone I love, and everything hurts”, “I’m with everyone I hurt, and everything’s love”, and variations on that theme - striving, failing, trying again with the same result. When Brown and bandmate Nate Amos let us in, they make it count.
“14” is the most accessible and nakedly emotional on offer. Built almost entirely on strings plucked and bowed, the shields are fully disengaged here. It’s structured around mantra-like phrases which comb over past mistakes - “When did it start to loop? / I traced what I erased” - and finding the power to overcome - “I’m ready to throw you up”. It’s a well-earned piece of raw melancholy which serves as the perfect finale.
Only, it doesn’t end there. Everyone’s Crushed concludes with “Buy My Product”, a goofy kiss-off with a Joy Division bassline and a reminder that “There are no happy endings / There are only things that happen”. Unwilling to finish on “14”’s vulnerability, Water From Your Eyes keep us at arm’s length, but eager to burrow deep and discover everything this album has to offer.
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