The album opens on the song “Structure” with a roboticized rendition of a flamenco guitar playing throughout the light but dreamy track. It’s sputtering and glitchy with its digital portrayal, along with vocal samples pitched up and down. The song’s title is a very tongue in cheek nod to their previous album of the same name, which unlike all their other full-length albums, lacked a title track. Also, like its predecessor, “Everyone’s Crushed” plays around with an albums structure. 

Near the end of the album is the track “14” which starts out with a shallow rippling ambience, as it builds with the might of an orchestra. Slowly, it crescendos towards a climax filled with sentimentality. Like a sauntering somber walk away from a closing curtain. Reflecting on memories of the good things that have past as it simmers back down.

Water From Your Eyes then follows up the perfect album closer with the song “Buy My Product.” The true closing track is more akin to the quirky dance tracks that show up throughout the duo’s discography. It gives the feeling like it’s there as an afterthought means to cement the vaguely anticapitalistic themes found on the record. However, being familiar with the band would give the listener the feeling that it’s intentional. Another way to have a fun subversion of expectation.  

Though the album does seemingly have more distinctive themes, relating to things like constant repetitive productivity in the corporate world, there’s nothing concrete. Instead, the primary purpose of the words is to use their morphemes to enhance the music and its flow. Like on the track “Out There,” where the chorus is just a string of one syllable words tied together by sheer sound. It’s as Rachel Brown put it in an interview with KRUI, “The lyrics are more about presentation than they are about intention.” 

Two of the most energetic points in “Everyone’s Crushed” come with the singles “True Life” and “Barley.” Both have a very similar song structure, with a first and a second vocal part that perfectly overlay on top of each other to create a claustrophobic swirling effect. Playing over this is the constant hit of a brash sound marking the beat.

Image via Pitchfork

“Barley” in particular is formed exceptionally well. Amos’ No-Wave-esque composition with a shuffling drumbeat and bustling bass line both are put together with a sliding siren like guitar, and warbling synth lead. All of this with the repetitive ring of a discordant phone chime. Brown’s vocals go from a deadpan counting to a staggered resonation. All these cacophonous sounds are organized perfectly together to make one of the most unique, and best tracks of the year.  

This energy isn’t sustained on the album and mellows out on the rest of the tracks, which can hurt how engaging moments on the record are. The songs “Open” and “Remember Not My Name,” both also having a near mirrored song structure, are marked by a driving ambience, blanketed over by a hazy atmosphere. Shredding through this are the searing sounds of sawtooth synths and droning harsh noise. Like bright red flares cutting apart a serene night sky. 

The noisy clamor and abrasive dissonance of sounds are composed into odd yet cohesive pieces. Water From Your Eyes eclecticism and broadening array of sound along with their ability to make it feel genreless is what makes them captivating. “Everyone’s Crushed” is out now on Matador Records. You can listen to it on their Bandcamp and other streaming services.  

The post Water From Your Eyes Shatter Structure on “Everyone’s Crushed” appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Since my 13-year-old self didn’t keep up with when all the hot new music was releasing, I missed the roll out of the album, which is a shame because it included excellent music videos tied together with a Mardi Gras theme, and the band members of Austin Brown, Sean Yeaton, Andrew and Max Savage all draped in matching purple suits. Instead of on release day, I first listened to the album early on a summer morning, waiting in a gas station with my mother as our car got an oil change. I was watching the animated gifs that went along with each song, a new feature on Spotify at the time. It was in the midst of the 2018 World Cup, which demands my full attention every four years, so the first track on the record caught my eye.  

Image Via Stereogum

The opener “Total Football” begins with punchy guitars backed up by a marching drum beat before suddenly switching to a fast-paced riff with an intricate flying bassline. Andrew Savage sings with a snarky tone before leaving way in the chorus for a calm collective chant among the other members of the band. During the bridge Savage then erupts into a screaming shout as the chaos surrounding builds up to its climax with the repeated cry of “Total Football” among the band members. The song then comes crashing down and recollects itself returning to the same riff as in the intro as Savage continues spewing out his manifesto of collectivism.  

The title comes from the 70’s Dutch football tactic that took over the 1974 World Cup, where every player can play any position on the field, swapping roles with one another. The song uses this as a comparison and call to arms for all the different members of society, like listed in the chorus, to set down their classifications that divide them. It calls upon them to break from individualism and come together to fight back against any oppressive force.  

Afterwards it then rolls into the opening slam of the second track “Violence.” Overtop the cacophony of a funk-punk jam Savage yells out his anger and frustrations, like a raver through a megaphone, about the abundant presence of violence in daily modern life. Through his witty and dark remarks, like with “Savage is my name because Savage is how I feel when the radio wakes me up with the words suspected gunman,” he calls out the institutions that perpetuate the senseless slaughter, and how it can further drive a person mad hearing about tragedy after tragedy. Spliced in between the verses is an ominous, bellowing voice accompanied by the g-funk whistle characteristic of 90’s hip hop. 

The song ends with a bassline that flows perfectly into the one on “Before the Water Gets Too High.” This song mellows out the pace of the record. It has a shuffling beat marked by the clacks of a wood block, and the dissonant drone of an Omnichord, all as the bassline bubbles up and down. The song tells of how at our current pace, we are all marching towards an inevitable doomsday brought on by an impending climate catastrophe. Even with the infinite amounts of warnings, nothing will be done until the oceans rise to the levels of the penthouses that those in power occupy, where the “rich become refugees.” 

“Mardi Gras Beads” then begins with shimmering guitar chords, and spacious arpeggios, creating a soaring sound that ripples waves in time to bring back nostalgic feelings as one slow dances by themselves. It’s a love song that guitarist Austin Brown sings to himself remembering the happy moments with a former lover as he fixates on the Mardi Gras Beads hung around his neck. The nostalgia in the song also reflects a time when things were simpler, and away from all the turmoil that is brought up throughout the album. 

As the last notes ring out, we are hit with the pummeling riff of “Almost Had to Start a Fight” and staggered staccato shouting as all the anger that was pushed down comes erupting up again back to the surface. The song has a sharp animosity towards people that stoke the flames of intolerance and division, as shown with the lines “What do you do when you are provoked?” and “What if I’ve grown tired of being polite?” From this a burning hostility forms which only feeds into that negative energy, and leaves a person frustrated and exhausted.  

The song then shifts into its second part “In and Out of Patience.” It continues the angry emotions and rapid tempo, yet it feels far less serious. This tone is matched by fast paced and bouncy instrumentation. A lot of the grievances here are pretty petty, like dealing with poorly designed public transportation or not having enough time and energy for all the people around you.  

The next one is “Freebird II” which has a very uplifting atmosphere, even with the trapped feelings of the lyrics. It has a strutting bassline paired with the warm sound of an organ, which gives it the feeling of a Vietnam era classic rock song. Savage sings about how when you’re born into poverty, you can never truly escape it, as the structure of the world is always trying to push you back into the thick of it. Despite this, there is a sense of emancipation with every member singing in tandem “Free, I feel free, like you promised I would be,” at the end.

The B-side of the record is characterized by quicker, more succinct songs. It begins with the track “Normalization” and its rapidly strummed, then paused, then strummed again guitar riff. The song is about getting used to all the hard to conceive and often horrible aspects of life as time progresses. It has a psychedelic breakdown in the middle to leave room for a bass solo entrenched in a groove, along with metallic drum and guitar parts, and a faint beeping like that of a distant satellite.  

Even with the perfect record, there has to be a low point. It’s as Jeff Rosenstock said on “Perfect Sound Whatever,” “Perfect always takes so long, because it don’t exist.” Despite being the weakest song on “Wide Awake,” and almost dragging at points, “Back to Earth” is still a great song. It continues that spacious feel of the closing ambient part on “Normalization” and has this odd, alien like instrumentation. It’s a very enveloping song. Along with this, it has a sweet sentimentality to it.  

Then comes the title track, which is overtly fun, and incredibly danceable. It has a bumping bassline, punctuated strutting percussion, shouting in tandem, and bits of flair like the ringing of a whistle or odd off takes of randomly blurted vocals that gives it a wonderful party atmosphere. The phrase “wide awake” is called out repeatedly to mark the common motif of the album of being awake and aware to societies problems and being conscious enough to try to help solve them. The way it’s shouted gives the song a slight punk edge to match the rest of the album. The song is immensely groovy, and insanely funky.  

“NYC Observation” has a simple shredding distorted guitar riff that takes frequent breaks to make room for beeping guitar part present throughout the entire song, that sounds like the ticker to a news broadcast. It’s fitting with Savage furiously reporting about all the scenes of intense poverty that paint the scenes on the streets of New York City. With his descriptions, he builds a sense of reflection for those who glide past and ignore houselessness, so as not to muddy their own consciousness, because it’s inconvenient for them to think about it. For an album with a lot of anger, this song exudes some of its rawest emotion. 

The guitar riffs on “Extinction” radiate out. Even though it matches the pace of the previous song, it has a much more upbeat and peppy feel. The clean tones, and jangly riffs are allowed to reverberate. This accompanies the song’s message about trying to leave behind all our negative thoughts, and try to focus on positive things. The progression arcs from being down on themselves, like with the line “Masochism forming in the reflection,” to thinking more positively on the line “Spring has finally sprung it’s not cold outside, and I’m thinking of all the places that I want to go.” 

“Death Will Bring Change” brings a slower pace and a much more somber tone. The sounds of swelling, crashing pianos faze in and out like violent all-consuming waves. It repeats the theme of spacious distant beeping like on “Back to Earth.” The dreamy echoes of a children’s choir accompany Brown to make this piece sad, but beautiful. Brown sings solemnly about death and how loss can drastically change a person’s life, reflecting on the bitter taste that it leaves. 

The album closes with “Tenderness” which acts a triumphant finale that overcomes all the negativity and hostility within the world and one’s own head. The song has a laid back but sprightly atmosphere with its jangling keys and short twangy guitar hits. Savage sings about rising above all the nihilism and desolation in the world. No matter how horrible it gets, there’s still beauty to be found in it. It gives a means to try to come together to improve it. In the end we can still dance and have a good time. 

Image on the back of the Wide Awake album cover. Via A. Savage

The artwork adorned on the album cover is iconic, with the three headless marching figures dressed in different colors that compliment each other well. This is all with the rest of the packaging that came from the release. All of it was created by Andrew Savage, who has done the artwork for each Parquet Courts release. It’s manifested in his wavy organic style that accentuates movement.

The overall instrumentation on “Wide Awake” is phenomenal. The fast, light ferocious punk rock of their previous albums is mastered and refined perfectly, like on “Total Football,” “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patiences,” and “NYC Observation.” Infused so well into this are elements of danceable funk music that’s heavy on the title track, while “Violence” is an amazing conglomeration of the two. Parquet Courts being masters of the mellow song do that expertly too, like with “Before the Water Gets Too High” and “Mardi Gras Beads.” At the same time there’s roaring ripping moments that you can mosh too, along with captivating party like ones you can dance to. 

This is aided by drummer Max Savage’s consistency and ability to match any tone. His pauses and switches give these songs so much energy and vibrance. This is paired with bassist Sean Yeaton mastering his instrument on this album. Starting out as a guitarist before joining Parquet Courts, he delivers impeccable bassline one after another, and really finds his groove. Those basslines give “Wide Awake” its character. Yeaton lays the groundwork for the record’s combination of punk energy, and funk rhythms.  

Other than the use of the term “woke” for the album’s motif, as conservative pundits have bastardized the term to mean anything not straight, white and christian, “Wide Awake” has aged well. The topics throughout are still ever present today. Even on the other side of a global pandemic, not much has changed systematically. Needless and senseless violence persists, where often a person doesn’t have enough time to grieve before the next tragedy hits. The world is still heading towards an environmental disaster, and no one with the power to has decided to act. Bigots have too much of a say in daily concourse. Extreme poverty runs rampant across all of America, effecting a vast majority of it’s people. Despite all of this, we can hold onto the message of using collectivism to voice our displeasures with society and how it’s run. There is still so much beauty in the world to fight for. We just need to hold onto optimism. 

“Wide Awake” is one of the greatest albums of all time. It’s my favorite ever. It’s as close as you can get to perfect. You can listen to it, along with the rest of their discography, on the Parquet Courts Bandcamp and other streaming services. 

The post A Half Decade Track by Track Retrospective of “Wide Awake” by Parquet Courts appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Amos stood onstage with a guitar with a long, linear array of pedals in front of him. To his side was a laptop hooked up directly to the venue’s sound system which provided the majority of the instrumentation and allowed the band to perform their deeply composed songs. Touring member Al Nardo, also on guitar, took the right side of the stage. In the center was Brown, donning a pair of sunglasses, with just their microphone. 

Nate Amos of Water From Your Eyes

The set began with a whirling sound of harsh noise which would go on to fill in the gaps between songs. The sound was broken with the word “break” to open the first song of the night, “Break”, from their 2019 album “Somebody Else’s Song“. It played out with hypnotic layers of non-quantized repetitive beats. A soft ringing of a minimalist guitar waded through it, with rolling pianos going over. Brown’s vocal performance in the song switched between a staggered, and a haunting searing tone. 

Much of the audience immediately found a groove to dance along with. This groove continued through the second version of “Quotations” on their 2021 album “Structure.” The Steve Reich-like piece included Brown singing over short, sampled pieces of their own voice, syncopated clicks and drums, and faint rumbling bass.  

Image via Little Village

The already bouncing energy of the venue immediately soared when the band played their new single “Barley” from their upcoming album “Everyone’s Crushed”. The audience borderline moshed as they counted along with the lyrics. Brown broke out into an odd, flowing wavy dance on stage. They swayed to the shuffling beat, Amos’ abrasive guitar and the repeating dissonant chime of a phone sounding synth. Along with “Barley”, Water From Your Eyes filled half the setlist with unreleased songs from the new album.  

Then after moments of silence, the audience was blasted by the earth-moving sound of a shredding heavy bass tone, cycling repeatedly in the track “My Love’s”. The crowd jumped up with each of its roaring hits, as if they were trying to add to the seismic intensity of the artificial quake. Rising and falling, short articulated melodies joined in with the intense vibrations.  

Rachel Brown of Water From Your Eyes

Afterwards, the band played “Track Five”. Brown sang over a slightly out of tune backing track, and a dreamy, gazey electronic buzz swelled up and down in its amplitude, until it hit a breakdown. The track then reminisced like a needlessly bad ass theme to a propaganda-like police movie, with its pummeling “Robocop”-like synth lead. On top of this, Brown talked out distorted echoey chants.  

The band closed out the set with the unreleased song “14″, which was much more soothing than many of the songs played throughout the set. It made for a calming closer to a fantastic, energetic performance. The tranquility of it was there to hush the frantic energy of the crowd. Nonetheless, when the song was over, chants of “Water From Your Eyes” broke out as they packed up. 

Water From Your Eyes continues their tour for the next month, going until just before the release of their new album “Everyone’s Crushed” on May 26^th through Matador Records. You can listen to their music on their Bandcamp and other streaming services. You can also read through the interview Rachel and Nate did with KRUI here.  

Full Setlist: 

Break 

Buy My Product (Unreleased) 

“Quotations” 

Structure (Unreleased) 

Barley 

Out There (Unreleased) 

My Love’s 

When You’re Around 

Track Five 

True Life (Unreleased) 

14 (Unreleased) 

The post Mission Creek 2023: Water From Your Eyes Break it Down at Gabe’s appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Saturday night The Blue Moose Tap House hosted Mission:Beat, a DJ-led dance party presented by Little Village Magazine. Now, I will be the first to say that I really do not know much about EDM or dance parties, I honestly didn’t even know half the music played at school dances. That being said, Mission:Beat was definitely an interesting experience.

The Blue Moose in general is a pretty cool venue; the staff is pretty chill as are the patrons. The doors for Mission:Beat were said to open at 8 PM, with the show starting at 9, but when I arrived at the bar at a cool 8:45 PM there was like no one there (and by no one I mean like 8 people). As still being underage, I have only been on the ground floor of the bar (generally upstairs is 21+ only at all times) so I hung downstairs for a while seeing if people would start filling in (they didn’t really). The event was being held upstairs, so around 9 PM venture upwards into the unknown I did.

Upstairs was slightly less dead than downstairs, but only by a few people. However, it was like ascending into a whole new dimension. I watched the DJ’s do their last sound checks and by the metallic sounds coming from the speakers and strange alien images scrolling along the screens by the stage, the theme of the evening seemed to be, Futuristic Space?

People kept filtering in as the time passed and I was surprised to notice that the median age of attendees seemed to be around 30, which I guess makes sense seeing as rave culture was pretty big in the nineties and early 2000’s, but it was still a bit jarring in the moment. However, at this point in the night, the Cubs and Diamondbacks game playing on the television above the bar was slightly more interesting than the actual event.

As it got closer to 11 PM, the dance floor was at least crowded enough to squeeze into and have a bit of cover if you wanted to go a little wild to the beat, and I uncharacteristically actually did on occasion. It is weird listening to electronic dance music in the sense that you don’t actually know what is going on, but you feel like you know what’s going on. In the slower beats, I stood off to the side and people-watched, which turned out to be a pretty entertaining experience. You could see nearly everyone on the dance floor just casually bobbing with the music, and then look a little deeper and see one person just feeling it and going all out.

Overall, I spent the majority of the evening stuck in a limbo between wanting to leave and being mesmerized by the music and atmosphere. I don’t know if I would personally re-attend this event next year; I decided it just isn’t my thing. Maybe it is just one of those things you can’t go through completely sober, which I did. However, if dance parties are your thing then I’d say definitely give it a go next Mission Creek season. Just maybe don’t go sober.

Glow stick count: 6

Light up yo-yo count: 1

People feeling it: 4-5 at any given time

The post Mission Creek: Mission:Beat @ The Blue Moose Tap House 4/9/16 appeared first on KRUI Radio.