Released: 26/05/23
Dance-rock is a devilishly hard thing to do well, and is often, let’s be honest, a pile of old horse shit (I’m not going to name names, but you know who I’m talking about). Thankfully, Brooklyn’s Water from Your Eyes are awesome, proving with their sophomore album that they are the rightful heirs apparent to the brilliant Le Tigre. The sound world created by the duo of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos on Everyone’s Crushed (Matador Records) is wild – silliness and fatalism dance in a frantic lockstep with heart palpitating rhythms and absurdist, deadpan lyrics, which convey stories of personal and societal unease, with the result that the tracks bring to mind both the futurist-pop of Japanese composer Haruomi Hosono and the microtonal brutalism of Glenn Branca.
Current favourite songs on Everyone’s Crushed are the true dance-floor ripper ‘True Life’, which features a bass line so filthy that I can imagine Big Black’s Jeff Pezzati asking ‘how did they get that sound’; and the contemporary classical '14', on which subtly detuned, gliding drones mix with almost unbearably beautiful Arvo Pärt-ian strings and Brown’s haunting vocals. But honestly, everything on this LP is wonderful – I flipping love this record.