Water From Your Eyes - It's A Beautiful Place - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2023 . Life is horribly dark right now. And yet, it is not unfunny. That's the sentiment that animates Water From Your Eyes on their new album, and first for Matador, 'Everyone's Crushed.' On the follow-up to the Brooklyn duo's 2021 breakthrough, 'Structure,' Rachel Brown (they/them) and Nate Amos (he/him) find silliness and fatalism dancing in a frantic lockstep, using heart palpitating rhythms and absurdist, deadpan lyrics to convey stories of personal and societal unease. Described by Brown as Water From Your Eyes' most collaborative record ever - and, as such, a kind of reset for the pair, almost like a debut, despite technically being their sixth -it's a swollen contusion of an album experimental pop music that's pretty and violent, raw and indelible.

American Grim is more than a band, operating as an almost entirely self-contained creative collective, with singer Ryan Grim directing the group's evocative and enthralling music videos and guitarist Mike Morello engineering and producing their sophomore album, Ultra Black, himself. Music is their weapon. The stage is their battlefield. American Grim conjure the rich history of theatricality found in cinematic horror and dark literature, with the unrelenting energy of traditional hardcore, the massive propulsive hooks of post-industrial, and the unashamed weirdness of classic nü-metal. Devotees of Slipknot, Korn, Rob Zombie, and Marilyn Manson have all found a home within American Grim's music, while fans of groups like Hatebreed recognize something familiar about the delivery and aggression.

Delighting in contradiction, Structure is an ambitious LPthat approaches it's own impressive scope and aspiration with a tongue-in-cheek humor and a reflexive self-effacement that wonderfully reflects the personalities of it'screators. Influenced by Scott Walker's sole 80s ,Climate of Hunter and the works of the colorfield painterMark Rothko, it's a concept album that pokes fun of theidea of concept albums, exploring high-minded ideaswhile subverting them and applying a hyper-focused eyefor detail in the service of a series of clever misdirections.Tracks like opening single InchQuotationsInch see the bandat their freewheeling best, drawing from the persistentand building rhythms of the dance music tradition that haslong been one of the many elements of their sound, toconstruct a mesmerizing forest of sounds out of repeatingvocal samples, swooping synth lines and eventually cascading break beats. At the other end of the album's auditory spectrum, InchWhen You're AroundInch is an almost-saccharine nod at the band's more pop-oriented work to date.When taken together Structure paints a picture too vast to betaken in at once, but repeated listens reveal melodic subtleties, rhythmic minutiae, and lyrical repetition that allow thewhole to come into focus. Whether the lasting impression isconcrete or abstract will depend on the listener's perspective, but from any vantage point Structure is a thrillingly original and a first-class achievement in brutalist pop