Rachel Brown: Last News

“What constitutes a memory?” That’s a question Rachel Brown asks on “Let It Be 10,000 Years,” the opening song on their new Thanks For Coming EP What Is My Capacity To Love?. The project finds Brown in the immediate aftermath of a romantic break-up, trawling through the echoes of their past relationships and trying to piece themselves together while avoiding a repeat. Across eight scrappy and confessional songs, Brown reflects on a life spent seeking closeness with another person while never fully committing to letting anyone in.

Water From Your Eyes don’t take much seriously, but they are deeply invested in cover songs. The discography of Nate Amos and Rachel Brown’s Brooklyn-based project is partially defined by their versions of other people’s songs: In 2019 they released the aptly titled Somebody Else’s Songs featuring their take on tracks by artists like Eminem, No Doubt, and Carly Rae Jepsen.

Rachel Brown and Nate Amos have never shied away from confrontation with difficult emotions in their music as Water From Your Eyes — although, as Brown points out in the newest episode of Sounds of Saving’s “Songs That Found Me at the Right Time” series, “It’s ‘Water From Your Eyes,’ not ‘Water From Our Eyes.’” (“We’re not sad, you’re sad,” Amos adds.) The video, directed by Adam Donald and produced in partnership with 988 Crisis and Suicide Lifeline, features Amos and Brown discussing their own experiences of depression, self-destruction, and suicidal ideation before launching into a cover of Ween’s “If You Could Save Yourself (You’d Save Us All).” The criminally underrated closer of Ween’s 2003 album Quebec is a relatively straightforward entry from the notoriously whimsical band, an archetypal Gene Ween sad track that deserves a place in their enormous canon alongside the much-more-mean-spirited “Baby Bitch.” The song opens on an unusual scene — a “free ride home from the embassy” on which the protagonist spots “the governor and his lover holding hands” — but quickly becomes more relatable as themes of isolation, bitterness, and regret enter the fray. Our hero gets back to his place, empties his suitcase, and opens his windows wide.

Water From Your Eyes have announced that they will release their latest album ‘Everyone’s Crushed’ this spring – their first since signing to Matador.On it, the experimental pop duo attempt to draw humour from darkness – both societal and personal – a juxtaposition that lends a brooding tension to their sound.The album’s first single is ‘Barley’, which sees vocalist Rachel Brown deliver deadpan vocals over Nate Amos’s disjointed, urgent musical backing.“’Barley’ is a rhythmic sound collage experiment drawing from modern classical, classic rock, and dance music”, they say of the song. “The lyrics suggest repeated futile attempts at attaining the unattainable and allude to Sting and Sonic Youth”.“The video mirrors these concepts in scope, texture, and variety – juxtaposing feelings of entrapment and late stage capitalism against the sense of freedom inherent to the vast American landscape”, they add.

Water From Your Eyes are the Brooklyn-based duo Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, who you might know from their solo work as Thanks For Coming and This Is Lorelei respectively. Next month, August 27 to be precise, WFYE will release their second album Structure.