4 To Watch: Bodies of Water

Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Members (L-R): Kyle Gladden, Jessie Conklin, Meredith Metcalf, David Metcalf
Fun fact: The band's website features an annotated list of David's favorite gospel groups.
Why they're worth watching: Angelenos are already familiar with Bodies of Water's epic sound and furious performances, and the band's first tour is about to introduce it to a national audience.
For fans of: The Polyphonic Spree, Arcade Fire, Danielson

Bodies of Water’s extraordinary debut, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, takes about 40 seconds to reveal its myriad pleasures. The four-part harmonies, dense instrumentation, unabashed grandeur and a deep, unguarded sense of spirituality—it’s all there in the first few moments of opening track “Our Friends Appear Like the Dawn.” Ears Will Pop features horns, strings and Brazilian percussion alongside more traditional rock instrumentation. It’s an unexpected (yet somehow coherent) collision of church-revival theatrics and punk-rock immediacy. The sound of all four band members singing together is a signature, though band lyricist and guitarist David Metcalf says this isn’t by design. “Some of this came from hearing phantom melodies that we wanted to use in certain songs,” he says. “We sang them because we couldn’t really play them on our respective instruments.”

Bodies of Water’s music is equally inventive. With a different approach, the album’s instrumental amalgamation could have sounded staged—a hermetically sealed bit of pop theater. But the band was careful to be as organic as possible: “Rather than tracking everything one instrument at a time,” Metcalf says, “we recorded our four instruments live, all in the same room playing together.”

An intense spirituality and a strong sense of mission also pervade the album’s lyrics, with lines such as, “Open the gates / Let heaven’s floodgates open wide.” “Our faith is the definitive influence on how we exist in the world,” Metcalf says. “So our songs are naturally informed by that.” But, as with everything else on Ears Will Pop, big ideas comfortably coexist with spontaneity: “Our only spiritual agenda is to try to make a noise pleasing to the Divine ear, and sometimes that involves screwing around and rocking out.”