After 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed, Water From Your Eyes’ debut on Matador, vocalist Rachel Brown wanted to make a record that was less cynical—something that would have a more hopeful outlook. Their values lie in being optimistic that, despite corruption, most people value humanity and fight for a better future that serves all humankind. But when it came time to write their new album It’s a Beautiful Place, Brown found themselves conflicted. While dealing with their own mental health struggles as a person with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and witnessing the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, they found it difficult to retain that hope.
“I was trying to remain hopeful that the genocide will stop, that we’ll stop destroying the planet for profit, that we’ll start using our resources to give people decent lives—necessities like shelter, food, water, purpose, dignity. But it’s hard to maintain that when every day we continue to just watch atrocities happen at home and abroad,” Brown tells me, nestled in a chair next to their bandmate, multi-instrumentalist Nate Amos, in their manager’s apartment.
In It’s a Beautiful Place, Brown wrestles with enjoying the wonders of life while grappling with disillusionment, drawing inspiration from science-fiction and the prehistoric era to remind us that there’s more to this universe than what we know. While writing the album, they were reading The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Gui’s 1974 sci-fi novel that follows Shevek, a physicist from the anarchist, utopian society on the moon of Anarres, who travels to the capitalist Urras, Anarres’ sister planet, where his ancestors came from, as a way to try to bring both planets together. It mirrored Brown’s own efforts, as someone who is hopeful that a world not led by greed is attainable. However, they haven’t finished the novel yet, still waiting to see if Shevek’s quest will be successful.
Brown admits that, for them, it’s difficult to “write political music without it sounding cheesy.” The lyrics in It’s a Beautiful Place are often cryptic, but you get a clear picture of where Brown’s views lie. Take the hypnotic “Spaceship,” where they sing, “So you dream, you build, you change / The cage looks like a window pane / Wake up this gun can beg / I love, I loved you best,” or the rave-up “Playing Classics,” as Brown delivers in monotone the line, “Desire in crisis / No a longing for truce / Yeah the long hard road from here to the truth.”
“It’s like the Inception strategy,” Amos says. “With political stuff, you can’t tell people [what to think]. It’s hard for it not to feel preachy. That’s how a lot of this ended up being part of the lyrics, some sort of subconscious versions of those ideas that are buried in the album and part of the texture.” His mention of Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film leads to Brown, who studied screenwriting at NYU’s Tisch program, going on a tangent about how unrealistic the dialogue is in the film. Amos joins them in nerding out over Inception‘s dialogue. “Why don’t people talk like that in real life? Imagine if everyone talked in real life the way they talk in Megalopolis,” he ponders.
After I joke that Megalopolis inspired their album, Brown says that it “does fit into the world” of It’s a Beautiful Place. Amos adds that the movie represents “a lot of what this album ended up being,” which is “kind of absurdist.” Francis Ford Coppola’s maligned 2024 film means a lot to the duo, with the word “megalopolis” even sneaking its way into the It’s a Beautiful Place bio, as an Easter egg of sorts. The day after the presidential election last year, the band battled the impending gloom by going to see the film in theaters with some of the Matador team and Brown’s film school mentor. Their former professor’s reaction stuck with Brown: “He was like, ‘Well, [Coppola] made the movie he wanted to make.’” They realized that, much like Coppola’s latest film, Water From Your Eyes is the kind of project that doesn’t follow the rules of convention. Instead, it follows the whims of what Brown and Amos want to create, even if it means that some people won’t like or get it.
When I point out that, ironically, It’s a Beautiful Place is the most accessible album in Water From Your Eyes’ discography, trading clanging microtonal soundscapes for simpler melodies, Amos notes that, while it “has some more normal components, the total package feels like it’s almost weirder because it’s using more common tools to communicate some of the same ideas.” He believes the LP will “feel more familiar on the surface level,” but to him, it “just sounds like noise. I have no idea what this album is anymore.”
Much of It’s a Beautiful Place’s instrumentation had been in the vault for years, finally finding new life on this album. Some pieces, including the intro, outro, “Life Science,” and clubby sample in “Playing Classics,” came from a period in the spring and summer of 2020, when Amos was hunkering down during lockdown and making what he believed at the time would become the follow-up to their 2020 “sound collage,” 33:44. The body of work became a “pile of ideas to harvest things from.” Meanwhile, “Nights in Armor” was originally written as the potential 10th track from Everyone’s Crushed, but ultimately didn’t feel like the right fit, and the folksy “Blood on the Dollar” was a demo for Amos’ critically acclaimed solo project, This Is Lorelei.
IT’S BEEN TWO YEARS SINCE Water From Your Eyes signed to Matador, with the storied indie label understanding their artistic approach, never pushing the band in a certain direction, and instead just routinely checking in to see what they have in the works. But even while not having to worry about Matador having hesitations, Amos admits to getting in his head about the label’s reaction. “I remember sending the link to this one and 60-percent of me just being like, ‘Oh, they’re going to fucking hate this.’ But then they’re just chill,” he says.
When I ask him why he thinks that, he explains, “I’ve never finished working on a Water album truly believing that it’s better than the thing that came before it, and then six months later, I always have this re-evaluation. Structure, I was not happy with when we turned it in. But I now see it as a stronger thing. Everyone’s Crushed, I was worried it was a huge step-down from Structure.” He notes that every Water From Your Eyes album is going to “alienate a certain percentage of the people who really liked the last album,” which has its advantages, as “people’s choices for their favorite Water From Your Eyes albums end up in a pretty even spread.” Still, the anticipation of the reaction makes him overthink things, wondering how the new release will stack up against the rest.
That’s where Brown becomes the perfect balance to Amos. “I feel the opposite,” they say. “Every time I finish an album, I think this is the best one yet, but I think people hate it just ’cause I have insecurity problems.” Amos responds, “And usually when you tell me that, that’s what makes me begin to like it more again.” Brown shares another nugget of wisdom their film professor said to them, a message that the musician has retained since hearing it in class at 19 years old: “He was like, ‘You aren’t artists. You’re working on a craft, and it’s not up to you whether the thing you’re making is art. You just make the thing look as technical as possible and put as much creative knowledge as you can into it, and then it’s up to the audience.”
Coming up in a streaming era where Spotify’s “Discovery Mode” program pushes certain artists to its algorithm in exchange for reduced royalty payments, making it essentially a pay-for-play industry if you want to make a decent profit off your work, Brown has felt disillusioned with the current state of music. They point out that while other bands get to sell out big rooms and garner millions of streams through algorithms, their experimental and ever-evolving sound doesn’t really lend itself to the algorithm, and someone casually listening to it and then being like, ‘Oh, this is good. I should put this on my barista playlist.’”
Brown corrects themselves and clarifies that Water From Your Eyes are most likely on tons of barista playlists, but the music they make isn’t done with the average consumer in mind. “There are people who aren’t interested in anything that isn’t being directly fed to them, and they ultimately do make up a very large amount of the consumer market,” they say. “Sometimes, the state of the music industry bums me out. We could have probably sold a lot of records back in the day. Unfortunately, I just feel like the way that people listen to music now, with streaming and not even wanting it to affect what they’re doing—they want it to be in the background—makes me think, ‘Is this ever going to be sustainable?’ Not to say that everybody who’s successful in those ways is making ‘wallpaper music.’ There’s definitely a lot of really good musicians that are getting their rightful dues.”
Amos chimes in, noting that, while Water From Your Eyes are trying to make pop music that people will like, it’s their approach to pop that differs from what’s currently popular. Brown points out that, these days, people “don’t want to have to think, they just want to be told what’s good.” Brown brings up the current most polarizing figure in pop music: “Take Benson Boone. I don’t like that guy.”
“You don’t like him?,” asks Amos.
“No, I don’t like him,” responds Brown. “This whole thing with the backflip. He’s so popular because his music sounds like nothing and he can do a backflip, which is the most neutral skill to have, in my opinion. Everyone loves a backflip.”
“But that’s kind of awesome,” says Amos. “‘How did you become a millionaire?’ And he can just literally say…”
“Backflip,” Amos and Brown say in unison. They then get into a back-and-forth about Mormons and their hold on the music industry (Boone is a former Mormon), coming to the conclusion that the only good mainstream Mormon-affiliated act is The Killers. “Oh, my God. We’re gonna lose the Mormon audience in this article,” exclaims Brown.
IN THE BIO FORIt’s a Beautiful Place, Amos mentioned that, besides the sci-fi and prehistoric inspirations, the album is about “slowly becoming scared of God again after completely rejecting religion.” Speaking about this, Amos clarifies that it’s not about fearing God, but rather “being in awe of existence and the different things it could possibly be.”
He continues, “So much of the album musically is framed in a way where, [when] you zoom out, there are all these different genres, sandwiched between this sound that is more derived from physical sound properties than any tonality. All this shit happens with a sound that’s more like something that you would hear in the natural world. It’s like, ‘Okay, so all this music is still a tiny blip of possible sound.’ And ultimately, something that’s tiny can feel huge, but it’s a blip. Everything any of us experience in our lifetimes is insignificant on a cosmic level or geological level.”
Amos was raised Episcopalian, and rejected religion as soon as he left home. “Growing up, the whole thing was being scared of hell. Then, young adulthood was rejecting that being like, ‘Nothing exists,’” he elaborates. “So now, at this point in my life, if there really is a reason that things exist, if it’s an intentional thing, then the idea of a literal hell existing is less absurd than a lot of other things. There’s kind of a submission to the universe vibe.”
He explains that this is the thesis statement of It’s a Beautiful Place: “Your favorite rock album is less interesting than any dinosaur fossil or meteorite.” Instead, what actually counts is what you bring out of your passions—the realization that “the insignificant things are significant.” But with Amos’ awe over the universe and the mysteries of life also comes Brown’s perspective as someone with a Catholic upbringing. “I think that the very basis of Catholicism is that everything is connected and God is everywhere. The Holy Spirit is within all of us. And God is this overarching figure of order and chaos. It’s just this complete unknown.”
They add, “I just think that it’s the fabric of the universe. It’s like an electron cannot be observed without changing. Every tiny thing is connected in ways that if you refuse to acknowledge, then it’s like what do you believe in? What is your belief in God if it’s not that every single particle is the same fabric of time and space, and that it all matters, and it’s all affecting each other?”
To Brown, the Bible’s message of being gracious towards one’s neighbors has also been lost. Now, the conversation about Christianity has been used in bad faith, with conservatives weaponizing it as an excuse to spew hatred rather than build community through loving one another. “We talk about religion in this way that has less to do with what connects people to each other into the world we live in and is more about who’s right and who gets to go to heaven, or who gets to go to the promised land, or who gets to be a child of God rather than God is within all of us,” Brown explains. “And if you can’t recognize the God within, the people that don’t understand that there’s life in them and that that life matters, where are we going? Or do we all kind of die? I mean, we are going to die ’cause that’s just the contract. But are we going to die from normal ones, like the cancer from my cellphone? Or are we going to die from starvation when there’s clearly enough food to feed everybody, or natural disasters because we’ve decided that nothing matters more than using resources that are so clearly destroying the planet in the name of a few people making a bunch of money?”
THE MONKEY’S PAW that comes with going from a DIY band to joining the indie big leagues—with outstanding experiences from putting together New York City’s hottest annual event with their now-annual boat show, to joining labelmates Interpol for a performance to an audience of 160,000 fans in Mexico City—is that it invites people outside of the intended audience to voice their opinion about the band, which comes with a slew of negative comments. It’s something that Water From Your Eyes had mentioned when I first interviewed them in 2023, and it hasn’t gotten easier to deal with yet. “I’m nervous, though, if [the album] does do well, about going online and reading things about myself,” Brown remarks. “I wish that you could get paid without being perceived. I wish that people would just listen to your music and not have any questions or thoughts about you.”
Last year, Brown began dating the new “it” indie rock star: MJ Lenderman. When I ask them what it’s been like to be with someone who people are so invested in, Brown says that, thankfully, there hasn’t been much attention directed towards them while being in the relationship. “It only really comes up when we’re in public and he gets bothered by people. And I feel really bad for him. I don’t get bothered,” they say. But there was one incident with Lenderman’s fans that stands out to Brown:
“The funniest thing happened in Washington D.C, where we straight up walked out of this cafe, and immediately these two people were like, ‘Oh, my God, we love your music. Can we get a photo?’ And he was like, ‘Okay, yeah, sure.’ I was like, ‘Oh, do you want me to take it?’ They turned to me and said, ‘I’m a really big fan of your music, too.’ And then I took the photo and they left. I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, huge fan over here. You love my music, [but] hate my face? What’s up with that?’ Not to start beef with the fans. We’re losing the MJ Lenderman fans, we’re losing the Mormons. But we’re getting the Chicago Catholics. Dude, we’re getting the Pope on our side. That’s all that matters.”
“That’s the bigger audience,” Amos chimes in.
When I tell Brown that I received a few texts about them dating Lenderman after they hard-launched their relationship on Instagram for Valentine’s Day, they quip, “I got 300-percent more texts about the Pope than me launching my indie rockstar boyfriend.” But Amos points out that there’s a likely reason for that: “Is it possible that the people who would’ve texted you just already knew? ‘Cause I didn’t text you, but I didn’t see the launch. If I had just seen it out of the blue and had no idea, I probably would’ve texted you.”
For now, Brown is enjoying living in anonymity, big enough to be labelmates with major names like David Byrne and Kim Gordon, but still able to freely ride the train and go grocery shopping without anyone bothering them. However, they do hope that It’s a Beautiful Place helps bring the band to the next level in indie stardom. Besides being immensely proud of what they’ve accomplished with the album on an artistic level, Brown has a simple goal: “I really would love some money. And I would love for my friend Nate to have money.”
“That, and a little house someday,” Amos adds.
Brown interjects, “I would love even just to pay for an apartment for a year. That’s my main goal at the moment.”
The duo comes up with a scheme to get a higher number of album streams: “We should get a Drake or Post Malone remix,” says Brown. “I hear he’s really popular.” Amos proposes a solution: “Say the whole thing was produced by Post Malone. Just enough to start a rumor on Reddit, or something.” He suggests making a Reddit post announcing the rapper’s fictional producer credit. “No, no,” says Brown. “What we should do is: During the Indieheads AMA, [we’ll plant a question] that’s like, ‘Rumor has it Post Malone produced this.’ And we’ll be like, ‘We’re not really allowed to talk about that.’”
Brown adds, “We’re about to become Post Malone millionaires. Malonaires. Post Malonaires.”
It’s a Beautiful Place is out August 22 via Matador.
Tatiana Tenreyro is Paste‘s associate music editor, based in New York City. You can also find her writing at SPIN, NME, PAPER Magazine, The A.V. Club, and other outlets.
