There was a tripleheader line-up in store for us, opening with Lou Sherry, a beautiful hodgepodge assortment of dad rockers that sent the small, albeit very eager, crowd drifting by on waves of proggy, jammy magic. The four piece is local to Iowa City, and seems to be a staple amongst the live music enjoyers of the community. The band started off with some slow grooves but by the end of their set had the whole house rocking. I’ll be honest, I had no idea what to expect of the group prior to the show, but the lead singer Denny Richards’ hauntingly droning vocals and the band’s sporadic soloing had entirely charmed me by the end of the set. Needless to say, Lou Sherry has earned a fan base in my friends and I. 

At this point in the evening the crowd had really begun to fill out, and the excitement for the next two acts awaiting us started feeling even more palpable. With Friko, a Chicago indie rock group with a vast array of sonic influences, next on the bill, I knew the energy would be high enough to carry us through to the final act.

Fellow KRUI staff writer Amman Hassan recounts the performance:

“Friko brought an amazingly noisy and striking performance, just in time to close the spring semester. A night of emotional contrast and celebratory nostalgia, the show had a certain shared passion and communal energy amidst the crowd that reminds you of Iowa’s Hate Week, or when ABBA comes on at senior prom. Friko, in how they dress, act, and sound, present themselves in an incredibly humble manner. That was the impression I got from listening to their latest record Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, and that first impression proved true at Gabe’s. 

The performance felt stripped of the advertising and theatrics that make an artist feel untouchable or larger than life. Instead of being smothered in stage presence, Niko Kapetan’s raw and sincere vocals made it feel like there was no stage at all. It was as if we’d been lifted up to better stare into the soul of the music, being flooded by its presence. We in the audience were all too eager to accept the invitation.

Celebratory thrashing and intimate ballads were met with applause. It felt like we were in a recording of the legendary MTV Unplugged. A performance, so authentic and iconic, it gets reissued live and the venue becomes the place you tell friends *that band* played at. Already a contender for my artist of the year, I’m sure I’m not alone in stating that Niko, David, and Bailey have cemented their place in my musical memory, providing Iowa City with one of the most exciting acts in the indie scene and a great conclusion of many students’ semester at Iowa.”

-Amman Hassan

The night was making itself out to be a long one, but as soon as I heard the opening notes of Water From Your Eyes’ set, the instantly recognizable bassline of “Buy My Product”, I couldn’t help but dance along. Water From Your Eyes is an alternative pop duo made up by vocalist, Rachel Brown, and multi-instrumentalist, Nate Amos. The pair have been putting out music since 2016, and are currently touring their most recent project, Everyone’s Crushed, a punky and experimental take on electronic pop. I’ve been a listener for a little while now, and I was very eager to see how their sound would translate live. 

The atmosphere of WFYE stood in stark contrast to that of the previous shows, at least at first. It felt like an immediate attack on the senses: the lights were brighter, the music was louder, and the room was hotter. The duo was joined by some accompanying musicians, Al Nardo on bass, and Bailey Wollowitz on drums, who both brought depth to the group’s live sound. Wollowitz in particular held my attention captive as drummers frequently do, but the ability to play breakbeats live is something I’ve always deeply admired. 

Throughout the course of WFYE’s set, I alternated from enjoying the communal energy of the crowd, engaging with the music, and retreating to my own mind as the group’s more melodic tracks carried me away. Throughout the duration of “”Quotations””, I couldn’t begin to tell you what was going on around me and in the moment because I couldn’t have cared less. I’m fairly certain I had begun to hum to myself as I was lost in the constantly forever now. During songs like “Barley”, “Out There”, and “True Life”, when my awareness had found me once again, I could feel the electricity pulsing in the crowd. People were dancing, some were even attempting a mosh pit, though I elected to remain planted, just letting the movement happen around me. 

The juxtaposition between the group’s more danceable and experimental cuts, and their softer, almost chamber pop adjacent tunes made for an extremely unique listening experience. The band let their personalities speak for themselves while on stage, as there was always some level of motion occurring, and almost every song was punctuated by a brief but genuine “thank you” from Brown. As the set came to a close and we made our way out of the venue, I felt like I was returning after having been transported a bit. My senses were coming back to me.

The evening concluded with a lovely little chat with the members of Friko over by the merch table, and a walk home with friends recounting the various moments from the shows that we had loved. This was along with a mutual appreciation for drummers and bassists and singers, oh my.

The post Track Zero: Drifting, Floating, and Ascension with Water From Your Eyes appeared first on KRUI Radio.

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.

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.

I had the chance to sit down with Nate Amos and Rachel Brown, who make up the duo, ahead of their performance on Friday April 7^th at Gabe’s in Iowa City, and ask them some questions about their lives, creative processes, and more.  

Interview has been edited for clarity.

Image via Mission Creek Festival

I’m going to start out by taking it back to the beginning, tell me about the days you were born. 

Rachel: It was really cold; it was like one of the coldest days of the year. My mom was scheduled to get surgery to get me, and the cyst growing next to me, out, and they did it right on time at 9:45 am, and it was really cold in the hospital room. It was January in Chicago. That’s all I know. 

That’s all you can remember? 

Rachel: I mean no, I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember anything before I was like four. 

Nate: I was born in January in Denver, so I also assume it was cold. But the only thing I know was that I was born to Enya playing in the hospital room. She’s Irish, and like new-wave easy listening. I think that’s why I’m so fucking chill.  

So, Enya was like the first thing you ever heard, do you think that music seeped into your consciousness, and reflects in some of the things that you make? 

Nate: Um, maybe [chuckling]. Who knows. It could be possible. 

How do you guys write songs, and what’s the process behind it, since you have released a lot in the past few years? 

Nate: Generally, I’ll write the music and have a track prepared. I show it to Rachel along with either a melodic or lyrical prompt as a starting point to roll off of. Then Rachel will expand with lyrics from that point. That’s the basic bit. 

Rachel: It’s pretty streamlined in which Nate makes the music and then I come later where we write the lyrics together. Sometimes it’ll be a couple days after he’s been working on it, or sometimes Nate will dig up an old track that hasn’t really been fleshed out over months. Then finally one day it’ll just make sense and fall together. 

Image via Botanique

Rachel, do you add musical aspects to it, or is it Nate who does all the composing? 

Rachel: Nate does all the composing. I think there has been one release where I played something on keyboard, and Nate made music off of that. That song is actually really messed up. It’s pretty weird.  

What song was that one? 

Rachel: It’s the horse song. I don’t remember what it’s called. It’s about the horse in the sky. 

Nate: It’s track 3 on the EP called “III.” I’ll figure out what it’s called. It’s called can’t “Can’t Hold Me Gravity.” 

Where’d you get the inspiration to write a song about that? 

Nate: There was this picture of a horse balloon, and we just went with it.  

Do a lot of the lyrics come from inside jokes, or do you have a main lyrical concept behind a lot of your songs? 

Nate: At the time of writing that song, a lot of the lyrics were based off of inside jokes, but that’s not really the case anymore. 

Rachel: I think the way we write lyrics now there’s not really a way to misinterpret them, cause there’s no definitive meaning. But I guess that’s how I feel about all lyrics. Like when I listen to a song I think it’s about me if it resonates, and I think that’s an okay way to listen to music. The new album has more distinct themes, but they’re still up for interpretation.  

Do you leave the lyrics ambiguous so the listener can imprint on it better?  

Rachel: No, it just is ambiguous. The way the lyrics come together, it’s like they’re ambiguous to begin with. They’re not always an entire idea, but instead parts of ideas made to fit a melody. It’s more about the presentation, than it is the intention. Words are always up for interpretation. 

Nate: I feel sometimes with more literal lyrics, it’s the more likely I am to interpret them as an allegory for something. As soon as there’s an actual story being told I tend to gravitate towards thinking this story must be a metaphor for some other thing.  

So, you all have recently signed with Matador, what are some cool opportunities that have come recently from that? 

Rachel: They got us a birthday cake. They get us a lot of lunches too. There’s the obvious things too, like touring with other artists on the label like Spoon, Interpol and now Snail Mail. Also, wider outreach. I’m assuming more people have heard “Barley” than any other single we released. It’s also fun hanging out with the people there.  

With the Barley Music video, it seems like there’s a higher production value that went into. Does that come from more resources from Matador? 

Rachel: No, that’s more because my friends are doing better in the industry, and we basically did it for free. I unfortunately paid my friends low rates, but that’s because there was not much budget. There’s more of a budget now, but even if we weren’t on Matador there’s a good chance we would’ve still made that video. I went to film school, and my friend who graduated last year shot the video. He’s in Los Angeles now so he has been working more, and I have had more time to hone in my directing skills. 

You’ve directed all the past videos, right? 

Rachel: Yeah, it’s cheaper that way. You’re much more willing to do something for free when it’s for yourself. I feel the other videos we did, like with “Track Five” they don’t have as much of a plan or schedule.  

I do get the vibe from that video that you all just went out into a field and tried to see what you could make look cool.  

Rachel: That is kind of what it was. With “Barley” we did plan more, and my friend was very adamant about getting things a specific way to make it the highest quality it could be.

 Image via Under the Radar Magazine

Is it as time goes on you all get better connections? 

Rachel: Yeah, but you also get better at your craft. You watch more movies, and you remember the things they taught you in school that you just wrote off. Money of course helps, but even if we were on a different label, we probably would’ve still done something similar. 

Your manager Nikolas mentioned in an email that you were shooting a video last week; do you want to give any insight on that? 

Nate: We were supposed to go to Kansas City to shoot a video, but then the person doing the video got sick, and had to cancel it. We only found that out a day before we were going to fly there. Somehow, Rachel managed to put together a whole treatment and get a different video shot within a week, which is insanely impressive to me.  

Rachel: I’m going to be completely honest, we filmed all of the lip sync stuff at the wrong speed.  

Maybe that would be a cool effect. 

Rachel: It’s not, it just looks really bad. I gotta test out this other speed that I did the math for. It’s a good thing it wasn’t centered on that. It’s just a few shots, but it made me feel real stupid. You learn something every time though. Shooting in slow motion is not twice as fast. I just gotta figure out the right speed. 

How are you all feeling about this new tour, and coming to Iowa City? 

Nate: Really excited. We’ve got some sleeping situations to figure out and a lot of things to do, but still very excited. 

Rachel: I hear in Iowa City it gets busy on the weekends downtown with like people coming from outside and it being a college town. It seems like it has a very Midwestern vibe to it.  

On the weekends there’s a lot of heavy drinking, and like this chaotic Mad Max atmosphere. 

Rachel: I get that, I’m more so excited to experience it for the night. 

You can catch Water From Your Eyes on Friday, April 7^th at Gabe’s in Iowa City for the Mission Creek Festival. You can listen to their music on their Bandcamp and other streaming services. Their new album “Everyone’s Crushed” will be out on May 26^th via Matador Records.  

The post Mission Creek Interview: Looking Through the Lens of Water From Your Eyes appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The Brooklyn-based band formed in 2009, but only one original member remains – lead singer, Dustin Payseur. This is ironic because the band began as a means to expand the solo project of Payseur, but quickly turned into an ensemble act. The three current band members are Payseur,

bassist Jack Doyle Smith, and guitarist Tommy Davidson. The band name itself doesn’t hold much meaning, as Payseur explained to Flavorwire – “Whenever I’m reading I make a list of words I like. Usually they’re words that aren’t as clear as Beach Fossils, but when you’re choosing a band name it needs to be something that people can remember. It’s kind of unfortunate because at the same time there was a lo-fi beach theme going on so we ended up getting lumped in with that. Now that’s phased out some maybe people will stop associating us with that genre.”

The genre that Beach Fossils wishes to reside in is experimental pop. Some consider them to be an Indie Rock band, and “Be Nothing” gives us a glimpse of this with a lengthy hand-banging instrumental. But other than a few songs, most of Beach Fossils music evokes a sway rather than a head bang. The band toys with many different instruments such as piano, flute, saxophone and harpsichord, and writes intimate, striking lyrics.

Their sound reminds me of the time between when I wake up and when I actually begin my day – the moments where I pull myself out from under the covers, sip a mug of coffee, tip-toe around in slippers, imagining what the day will hold. I think Beach Fossils is the perfect backdrop for this time of day – calming, comforting and contemplative.

Now’s the time to start listening to Beach Fossils, because every one of their warm, soothing songs is worth knowing. They released their third studio album, “Somersault”, in June of this year, and knocked it out of the park. “Somersault” is the first album that the band has released on Payseur and his wife Katie Garcia’s record label, Bayonet.

Unlike previous albums where Payseur took the reins in terms of songwriting, the band truly collaborated for this record, creating a cohesive sound. “Third times the charm” definitely applies here, as this third album surpasses the prior two. Beach Fossils just keep getting better.

Here are a few songs that you’ll want to hear before you attend the show:

“Saint Ivy” – this light-hearted track conjures up the image of someone prancing along a sidewalk with a dog leash in hand, meandering about a park in the sun. The entire second half of the song is purely instrumental, beginning with a lovely flute solo, followed by a merging of piano, guitar and strings that keep carrying you through that park.

“Rise” is a short 1:42 song featuring Cities Aviv giving a point-blank confession. The instrumentals behind his voice sound bluesy, placing us in a foggy basement bar – saxophones slink through the air like smoke clouds as Cities Aviv speaks from the heart.

“Tangerine” has a peculiar title and vibe. From the moment it begins, we are set in a dreamy state as Payseur extends lyrics into lullaby-like notes singing, “Our time together’s always blurry/After a while it’s all a story”. Rachel Goswell sings the chorus in a whispery alto that wraps us up in seductive blanket of tangerines.

Beach Fossils’ show at Gabe’s at 11pm is one that you don’t want to miss. Come check them out  on Friday, October 20th and envision yourself in that road-trip montage.

The post Witching Hour Preview: Beach Fossils appeared first on KRUI Radio.