Art-pop duo Water From Your Eyes coming to Regency Ballroom

Originally published in the SF Examiner on February 21

Listening to Water From Your Eyes — the New York art-pop duo that will be playing at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Feb. 27 — can make for an utterly delirious experience.

The sonic backdrop for their songs is hallucinatory and wildly energetic, arrays of jagged guitars slicing through jittery synth compositions and throbbing rhythm movements.

The instruments all blend and merge together — not in the wall-of-sound shoegaze style, but in an alien, minimalist manner in which the original aims and purposes of each tool are deliberately upended.

On top of this beguiling combination is the dispassionate and deadpan vocal delivery of singer Rachel Brown, who emerges above the instrumental chaos with an almost angelic serenity. Brown, who uses they/them pronouns, gives the distinct impression of someone who stops by a riotous all-night rave purely for the refreshments.

“You know, when it comes to my delivery, I’m mostly just trying to enunciate my words correctly,” Brown said. “I feel like I talk pretty dryly most of the time, and that translates into how I sing. I don’t get that animated too often, unless it’s about pretty stupid stuff.”

Brown’s vocal takes might be unconventional, but they only add an illusory excitement to the work of Water From Your Eyes, a disparate approach that can make each song feel like a mystery to unlock. On the group’s latest album, 2023’s “Everyone’s Crushed,” the band’s fearlessness is taken to new heights, with traditional song structures and tropes eschewed in favor of relentless exploration.

“When we’re working on recording the vocals and doing the lyrics, the way Rachel handles everything is very natural,” said Nate Amos, the other half of the duo.

“It almost feels detached from what’s going on in the words, but that’s kind of what makes it all work,” Amos said. “I feel like not emphasizing a particular emotion in the vocal delivery turns the song into a little bit more of an inkblot. Then it can be interpreted in different ways rather than like, ‘Oh, this person sounds so sad or so happy or whatever.’”

Water from Your Eyes started nearly a decade ago, when Amos and Brown were both living in Chicago. The two were dating, but they eventually split up, and Brown relocated to New York City. Intent on maintaining their burgeoning musical collaboration, Amos moved to New York as well, and the band has steadily developed and evolved its sound over the course of five full-length albums.

The early catalog of the band is more steeped in traditional indie-rock settings, with acoustic guitars and soothing synths accompanying Brown’s expressive and expansive singing style. The duo continued to venture outside of those familiar terrains for each successive album, culminating in the adventurous atmosphere of “Everyone’s Crushed,” which was released on the legendary indie label Matador Records. Each track acts as a palate cleanser, providing an alternative reality to its successor song. The tunes include brooding, scratchy industrial offerings (“Open”), austere ballads (“14”) and sleekly polished club bangers (“Out There.”)

“I actually thought, at the time we were making this album, that it was all pretty tame,” Amos said. “There was definitely no intention of like, ‘Let’s really push it with this one’, although I guess I see why some people might think it’s a little weird.”

Despite the uncommon nature of the album, it was widely celebrated, landing on best-of-2023 lists from outlets such as The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Pitchfork.

“It’s been really nice to see how this has been received,” Brown said. “It’s kind of been unbelievable in a way that I know this is all happening, because I’ve seen it. But in no way has any of this registered.”

The duo has come a long way from its early beginnings, a sentiment that can be best distilled from the music video for “Barley,” a propulsive track highlighted by Brown’s brazenly monotone opening line, “One, two, three, four/I count mountains.” In that video, Brown and Amos play corporate drones working in a joyless, fluorescent-lighted office space.

“Neither of us have had typical office jobs before, but we’ve both had these very frustrating jobs in the past,” Amos said. “I think we both have a greater appreciation for where we’re at now after doing that kind of work.”